Balancing Act, by Ellen Stoll Walsh
Besides exploring the mathematical concept of balance or equivalency, Ellen Stoll Walsh offers a beguiling story of two mice, friends who have balanced a stick over a rock to create their own teeter-totter. One by one, additional friends appear and want to join the fun. Again and again, the teeter-totter becomes unbalanced and must be re-balanced by adding a friend or moving friends to the other side. At last, the weight of the friends is too great for the stick, and it breaks. The friends run off to play something else, all but the two original mice, who hunt up another stick and return to their balancing game. So this cut paper collage with minimal text also provides for discussion of the values of playing nicely with friends and refusing to give up easily.
But most of all, this is a charming story to read to the little one you put to bed every night.
Fairport children will recognize that the mouse statues outside the library window are cousins to this story. They come from Walsh’s earlier mouse book, Mouse Paint.
Towpath Reader 