Feb 22, 2009

The Mouse's Tale

Last week, while examining the cameo of the Rigotnomics patron mascot in The Economist, I was struck by an odd sense of familiarity. Not only did the mouse in the picture look familiar, but so did all the other animals and the little girl sitting around it. That's when it struck me. It's a picture from my favorite book: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll! The Rigotnomics mouse was born back in 1865 when he was drawn by Sir John Tenniel for the first publication of the book (Tenniel died in 1907, meaning that the illustrations came out of copyright in 1964)!

So who is the mouse? Most people might not recognize him since his scenes never made it into the Disney version of the story. But, he is passionate, a leader, speaks french, and you can discover him for yourself here (he appears at the end of Chapter 2 and throughout Chapter 3).

1 comment:

Pierre-Louis said...

so it's a mouse, not a rat, as I was trying to tell everyone...

other fact about the mouse: it is the first result of a google images search for "rat drawing"...