If the phrase "Stilton, Geronimo Stilton
" means anything to you, then most likely you're not a fan of stinky British cheeses, but rather you're the parent of a grade-school child who's discovered this series of books about the doings of anthropomorphized mice who live in the metropolis (or "mousetropolis" as the books might term it) of New Mouse City on Mouse Island. The titular Geronimo Stilton is the editor of the newspaper The Rodent's Gazette and purportedly the author of the 40-odd books in the series. While it's nice to believe that a talking mouse journalist did write them all, they're actually the product of a Milanese publishing company, Edizioni Piemme, and are produced for the American market by Scholastic.
Titles in the series range from The Curse of the Cheese Pyramid
to the Halloween themed The Peculiar Pumpkin Thief
. They're all "chapter books", designed for intermediate readers, and probably appropriate for children in third through sixth grade, although my son's been bringing them home since he was in first grade last year. The writing, adapted from the original Italian, isn't all that gripping for adults, but kids seem to love the series. My son has been bringing home a seemingly endless series of Geronimo Stilton books from the library and devouring them one after the other, sometimes reading an entire book in an afternoon.
Plots are simple. Generally they consist of the bookish and faint-hearted (and somewhat annoyingly passive) Geronimo getting drawn into some sort of adventure involving his family and friends in New Mouse City. Many of the same characters, like Geronimo's go-getter sister Thea, obnoxious cousin Trap, and precocious nephew Benjamin, recur in most of the books, giving kids a familar cast to associate with. The books abound with rodent-related puns and constant references to cheese, since everyone knows it's a mouse's favorite food, right? (Seriously, do mice really like cheese that much? Is there some scientific research on this?) Geronimo gets dragged along through the story and eventually helps resolve it through his knowledge and book-learning.
Illustrations are cartoon-y and appealing. At times it seems that the book designers are having almost a little too much fun, since a feature common to all the books is to have emphasized words set in contrasting, often decorative typefaces.
Geronimo Stilton isn't just a line of chapter books, I've discovered—it's a regular media empire! There's also a series of graphic novels, like Geronimo Stilton #2: The Secret of the Sphinx
and The Coliseum Con that are actually a little more sophisticated (to me, anyhow), than their chapter-book siblings, and more enjoyable to read aloud (with appropriate character voices a must). They all seem to deal with historical subjects, which is fine by me, since it encourages kids to learn a little more about the past as well as have fun reading—a win-win situation in my book. There's also a Geronimo Stilton TV cartoon—not distributed in the US, alas—and the series' website, www.geronimostilton.com, features a host of games and activities targeted to the books' grade-school audience.
They're worth checking out if your kids haven't already learned of them. No doubt you can find the Geronimo Stilton books by the cartload at your local library or bookstore, or you can order them from Amazon.com, which has a page devoted to the "author".
