Gingerbread Mouse

For seven years I taught English and theater arts at Brownell Talbot in Omaha. The school is in the center of the city with a beautiful old campus tucked in between trees by a large park. I taught fifth through seventh grade students and enjoyed their inquisitive minds combined with creative energy.

I particularly loved teaching seventh grade English. BT is a college preparatory school, so most of the students could read and write above their grade level. The discussions during class kept me on my toes as their creative analysis of literature took us in directions I couldn't anticipate. They also wrote analytical essays beyond many of the college freshmen I had taught in the past.

To keep class interesting, I assigned creative projects to accompany the novels we read. Tuck Everlasting proved to be one of their favorite reads, so I devised a house building unit. As a class, we spent a great deal of time discussing the descriptions within the book. One of the most detailed depictions within Tuck Everlasting concerned the house in the woods.

In Natalie Babbitt's story, Winnie grows up in a neat and tidy home, so "...she was unprepared for the homely little house beside the pond, unprepared for the gentle eddies of dust, the silver cobwebs, the mouse who lived- and welcome to him!- in a table drawer" (50). Like Winnie, my students found the Tuck house magical. I decided they should each build a replica of the charming Tuck home in the forest.

We revealed our masterpieces after Thanksgiving. The kids' creativity left me speechless. They used every construction material sold at Hobby Lobby and then some. Students built houses using wood, cardboard, posterboard, craft sticks, Legos, Styrofoam, Play-do, clay, and gingerbread. Most of the builders only included the outside of the house, but a few also depicted the inside. Little did I know, but one of the houses also included the mouse.

For the next three weeks, we enjoyed the works displayed around our classroom. We added Christmas decorations around the room and some of the houses were decked out with tinsel. Looking at the houses made the busy season more tolerable and I knew I would miss the display, but the room needed to be cleaned out before the holiday break.

On cleaning day, I needed to stand on a chair to reach the houses on the top shelves of the display case. I would take each house down and lovingly hand it to its creator. All was going well until I came to a particularly beautiful gingerbread house.

Mandy marched up to claim the house. I stretched out my arm, grabbed the house, and jumped in shock as a little mouse ran out the door and onto my arm. I screeched while flinging the house and mouse through the air. It all landed on the floor at the front of the room. The little mouse landed athletically, shook itself off, glanced around the room, and sprinted under the partition wall.

All hell broke loose! Students screamed and jumped up onto chairs. From next door, came more shrieking. I didn't know what to do, so I stood on my chair swatting at my arms as if I could wipe away all mouse germs with my hands. Eventually, laughter filled the room and we continued house distribution.

Going forward, all gingerbread and edible materials were banned from class projects!