📚 Book📚 Kids · Ages 7–10Classics / Literature

Stuart Little (1945)

About This Book

The Little family of New York City has a second son who happens to be a mouse, barely two inches tall, and from the moment Stuart is born, the world presents him with challenges scaled to his size: climbing out of a drainpipe, sailing a boat in Central Park, driving a tiny car up the Post Road in search of a lost bird named Margalo. The book is funny, gentle, and touched with a wanderlust that leaves both Stuart and the reader looking toward the horizon.

Why It's a Classic

E.B. White wrote Stuart Little before Charlotte's Web, and the two books share White's gift for precise, luminous prose and his refusal to talk down to children. Stuart's situation is never explained; he is simply a mouse born to human parents, and White treats this fact with the same matter-of-fact acceptance he brings to everything in the book. The story's open ending, with Stuart heading north in search of Margalo without ever finding her, was controversial when it was published, but it is also what makes the book linger in memory. White understood that some of the best stories end not with resolution but with possibility. The Central Park boat race is a set piece of comic perfection, and Stuart's brief career as a substitute teacher produces one of the funniest classroom scenes in children's literature.

Fun Fact

White dreamed about a small, mouse-like character years before writing the book, and he jotted down notes about Stuart while commuting on a train. The famous children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore at the New York Public Library urged White's publisher not to release the book, calling it "non-affirmative" and unsuitable for children. White ignored the advice, and the book has sold millions of copies. The open ending was deliberate; White said Stuart's journey was meant to represent the universal search for beauty.

Parent Note

There is nothing objectionable in the content. The open ending, in which Stuart has not yet found what he's looking for, sometimes puzzles children who expect tidy resolutions. The writing is elegant and assumes a capable reader. Best for ages 6 and up as a read-aloud, or ages 8 and up independently.