The sixth entry in Graham Oakley's picture-book series about the adventures of a group of church mice and their cat companion, The Church Mice At Bay follows Sampson, Arthur and Humphrey, and the rest of the mice, as they confront the vicar's summer holiday replacement. A hippie-type with a penchant for turning things upside down and a horror of rodents, the new vicar soon has our favorite feline in detention. Will the mice be able to save the day on their own...?

Discovered quite by chance, when I came across the first few titles at a used bookstore here in New York, the Church Mice books have been an entertaining and humorous diversion. I have enjoyed Oakley's sly sense of humor, and his detailed illustrations, and have appreciated the fact that church life is worked naturally into engaging stories that never seem to preach at the young reader, or get bogged down in any sort of didactic purpose.

Sadly, this is not the case here, and I found this installment of the series depressingly mean-spirited. It is clear from his extremely negative portrayal of the "hippie" vicar, and the many disruptive changes he institutes in the story, that Oakley sees himself as a defender of tradition. The Church Mice At Bay was first published in 1978, a time when such defenders must have felt rather besieged by the social changes taking place around them. But while one may or may not agree with those changes - in whole or in part - the implication that they were merely the result of fashion trends, or the idea that those who believed in them were cruel and small-minded animal-haters, is not something I can approve of.

Sadly, given the enjoyment Oakley's previous books have brought me, I simply can't recommend this one to young readers. There's already enough oversimplification of complex issues and demonization of the "other" out there - why throw more of it at impressionable children? ( )