Miss Kelvingrove was a very exact and precise person. She always dressed neatly, she never made much noise, and her hair was tied up in a tight and perfectly round bun.
Miss Kelvingrove liked things to be laid out in perfect rows, and in absolute order. She liked to keep her egg cups in rows in a special egg cup cupboard, she liked to keep her shoes in a neat rows by the front door because she never wore her shoes over her perfect carpets, and when she bought candy sweeties, she laid them out in a row and ate one every fifteen minutes and thirty seconds.
But the thing she liked to keep in order the most were books. Books were her favorite things because the pages were already in perfect order, and went from number one to the end in perfect order, and the lines on each page were always straight and every letter was the same size. Books made Miss Kelvingrove feel nice and calm.
Miss Kelvingrove was the librarian at Horsmarlonerpool library.
And so that meant that she had thousands and thousands of books to keep in perfect order, and keep them in order she did. Or thought she did, until Mr Bibbin the newsagent came in to return two books, one about unicycles, and the other about unicorns.
“Um. Miss Kelvingrove. Very good books, but they seem to be a bit… nibbled.”
Miss Kelvingrove took the books, looked at Mr Bibbin with surprise, and then inspected them. True enough, the bottom corners of lots of the pages were missing. It DID look like they had been nibbled.
“Well I didn’t do it,” said Mister Bibbin.
And then Lady Devonroe came in, returning a book about jam.
“Very good book,” she said. “But it did seem a little bit… nibbled.”
Miss Kelvingrove took this book and inspected it. Yes, here too were what looked like little bite marks around the bottom right hand corner of the first few pages.
Miss Kelvingrove didn't know what to think, and then Sophie and Georgie came in to return their books about kingdoms in the clouds.
“I hope we’re not in trouble,” began Georgie, but when we got the books home we found…“
Miss Kelvingrove took the books and held them up. “Bite marks. But who could be -“
“Mice of course,” said Sophie.
Miss Kelvingrove looked at her.
“Mice?” she said. “In my library?”
That evening, Miss Kelvingrove didn’t go home at five o’clock like normal. She couldn’t relax. She would have to inspect each and every book to see just how many had mouse bites in them - even if it took all night.
And as she walked slowly up and down the rows of books in the darkness of the evening, two little characters scuttled around under the shelves nearby. Two mice: Dibbin and his sister Dot.
Dibbin and Dot didn’t just live in the library because it was safe and cosy, they lived in the library because they loved reading.
They liked books on trains, on butterflies, stories about knights and stories about sailors, adventures in the desert or the jungle, books about building dams in a river, books about peanut butter - whatever the book, they loved to read it.
Dot would read quietly, but Dibbin had the habit of biting off bits of the page and chewing them when he read.
“Filthy habit,” Dot would say. And it was, but Dibbin didn’t mean it. He didn’t even know he was doing it - he loved books too much to damage them on purpose - but when he was reading he forgot what he was doing.
“Tonight,” Dibbin declared, I am going to find a book about electrics. I like electricity. I like the sparks and the power. Yes. I’m going to find a good book about electricity.”
“I think electricity’s dangerous,” said Dot.
“Only for people who don't use it properly,” said Dibbin. “Or people who are careless. I’M not careless -
SLAM!
Suddenly, Dibbin’s world went dark. He scrambled about. He was in a box.
“Dibbin!”, Dot said.
Now Miss Kelvingrove was a very kind lady, who would never want to hurt a mouse, and so the trap she’d set down one of the many corridors didn’t hurt Dibbin, it just kept him trapped. But Dibbin didn’t want to be trapped, and Dot didn’t want him in there either.
Luckily, these mice had read a lot of books, and Dot kept calm enough to come up with a plan.
“Dibbin?” she whispered at the side of the box, “Remember the adventure we read about the tunneling adventure archeologist? Remember how she got out of the scary cave?”
Inside the box, Dibbin thought. “She got a hand under the door and pulled it up.”
Dot put her weight against the side of the box to keep it from moving, whilst inside Dibbin slipped his tiny paw under rim. A crack of light appeared!
“You’re doing it!” said Dot, and helped lift the box from the outside, so Dibbin could scramble out.
Just then, Miss Kelvingrove came around the corner and saw her mouse trap box on the floor! But it was empty.
That night, Dibbin and Dot felt sad.
“Someone was trying to catch us,” said Dot.
“That means we’re not welcome here,” said Dibbin.
“But this is where we live,” said Dot. “What have we done?”
“I don’t know,” said Dibbin. “But from now on, we need to be extra, extra careful. That’s just the way it is.”
Three days later, a group of pupils from Half Hitch school had come into the library to sit on the rugs and be told an exciting story by Miss Kelvingrove. There was juice and lemon cakes, and the story was an adventure about going to the moon!
But the children weren’t the only ones listening to Miss Kelvingrove’s story, from under one of the bookcases, so were Dot and Dibbin.
“And then the space adventurers landed on the moon,” read Miss Kelvingrove. “And they started building a house out of the wood they’d brought.”
Dot sniffed. “You can’t build a house out of wood on the moon. There’s no gravity, it would just float away.”
“You can’t build a house out of wood on the moon!” she called. But her voice was so squeaky and tiny, that nobody heard her.
Dibbin had an idea. He’d become so interested in electricity that he’d taught himself how to build a microphone, which makes your voice very loud indeed. “Here, try this,” he said to Dot, pulling the lead from under the bookcase and handing it to her.
“I said you can’t build a house out of wood on the moon!” Dot boomed.
Everyone turned to look! Miss Kelvingrove turned to look!
“You are the mice who’ve been eating my books!” she said.
“Wait!” said Susan, one of the children. “They seem like very clever mice. Maybe we should listen?”
Dot took the microphone and told the class all about gravity and how you float around in Space and can do somersaults in the air for as long as you like. Then Dibbin took the microphone and told everyone about spaceships and how they need lots of energy to leave Earth, but only a little bit to travel around in space because there’s no gravity to pull it back to the ground.
They were the cleverest mice anyone had ever heard. Soon, people from all over Horsmarlonerpool would come along to the library in the afternoon to listen to Dot and Dibbin teach classes.
And not only did Miss Kelvingrove learn to love them as friends, and make sure they always had a home in her library, Dibbin never ate another piece of any of the books. And why? Well, that was Susan’s idea. Every time she listened to the mice teach a lesson, she left them both a nice big fat piece of her lemon cake.
