Great Change
- This book starts out with a wee bit of mystery: "The first we heard of it was when my sister Louise came skittering down the long passage from upstairs" (1.1). What's this it our narrator, Helena, is talking about?
- Helena isn't going to tell us right away. She does give us a little background on her family though. She's the oldest kid of the bunch, and she has two younger sisters, Beatrice and Louise, who are helping around the house. Plus they have a brother named Lamont, who is at school.
- So back to Louise: she's just arrived home with some seriously important news. But before she can say it, Helena gets angry at Louise for taking "the front stairway during daylight" (1.7). Apparently they don't want some folks called the Upstairs Cranstons, who own the house, to see them. Nope—Helena definitely isn't spilling all the beans just yet.
- So Louise has overheard Mrs. Cranston talking to her daughters, Olive and Camilla, about moving to Europe. Helena and her sisters are pretty shocked by this news… especially since they don't like water.
- Louise and Beatrice don't understand why the Upstairs Cranstons are moving to Europe, but Helena has figured it out: they want to find a husband for Olive. Apparently Olive is almost twenty-one, and back in the day that meant she needed to find a husband quick.
- Helena also lets us in on another secret she's been keeping from us: she and her siblings are mice. Whoa. Good to know, right?
- Plus they aren't just any mice—they're some of the oldest mice to live in America. They live in the Hudson River Valley, in New York. And according to Helena, they were in America before the Dutch came and built their homes. So the mice made these their homes too, and they considered themselves Dutch.
- When the English moved in and built new homes, the mice decided to be English instead. So when the Cranstons moved to the Hudson River Valley from Cleveland, these mice made a home in their walls. In fact, Helena and her siblings use the same last name: Cranston.
- So that's the skinny on these mice. They live inside the walls, prep their own food, and even make their own clothes—plus they can hear everything going on upstairs from within the walls.
- All of a sudden, Lamont comes home. There was a cat hanging out by mouse school, so everyone got out early. Sounds reasonable to us.