Seven Blind Mice

Seven Blind Mice by Ed Young

Caldecott Honor/Traditional

This simple picture book tells the tale of 7 blind mice who live near a pond. When an elephant visits their pond, the mice try to figure out what it is, one at a time. Each of the mice only explores one part of the elephant and they all claim that it is something different. for example, the mouse who only feels the tail of the elephant believes it to be a rope. The final mouse explores the whole elephant, discovers what it is, and the moral of the story is "knowing in part may make a fine tale, but wisdom comes from seeing the whole".

This is a traditional story with a moral at the end. This book provides a great opportunities for talking about the morals of stories, and perhaps allowing students to write their own stories with morals. Books such as this one are also great for discussion, since the moral could potentially be understood in different ways by different students. The first standard in the Reading Standards for Literature K-5 involves refering to a text when answering questions or drawing inferences (RL.3/4/5.1). This standard could be implemented in a lesson with a simple read-aloud activity followed by a discussion of the story where students are required to cite details or examples from the story.

Young, E. (1992). Seven Blind Mice. New York, NY: Philomel Books.