Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp (1962)
By Taylor Jasmine | On October 22, 2017 | Updated December 23, 2022 | Comments (0)
From the original review of Miss Bianca (book #2 in The Rescuers series) by Margery Sharp in The Anniston Star, November, 1962:
What a joy it is, in the harsh literary wilderness of earnest tragedy and frantic sophistication, to find an occasional fairy tale, all delight and whimsy and otherworldliness!
Margery Sharp gave us this pleasure several years ago with her wonderful little book, The Rescuers, the stirring tale of the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society and its daring rescue of a Scandinavian poet from the gloomy dungeons of the notorious Black Castle.
Now the same mouse heroes return in triumph once more in Miss Bianca, a continuation of the hair-raising adventures as friends of the oppressed.
Meeting Miss Bianca in the first chapter
“What a picture she made, as she stood modestly waiting on the platform for the applause to subside! — her coat ermine-white, her long dark lashes fluttering over her huge brown eyes — round her neck a very fine silver chain — her whole tiny, exquisite figure thrown into graceful relief against a background of potted palms!
But beneath that composed exterior her heart was in fact beating like a very small sledgehammer, for Miss Bianca had been drawn into public life against her will …”
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See also: The Rescuers by Margery Sharp
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Rescue of Patience goes forth
This time lovely Miss Bianca, an aristocratic white mouse in a silver chain, who periodically leaves her porcelain pagoda home at the Embassy to do her duty as a member of the Prisoners Aid, masterminds the rescue of eight-year-old Patience, the downtrodden servant girl of the wicked Duchess in the Diamond Palace.
Plodding faithfully behind Bianca is her worshipping suitor, Bernard, a rough fellow but stalwart and true, to turn the winning trick at story’s end and save Patience from a terrible fate.
Harrowing encounters
Meanwhile the little white mouse and the long-suffering prisoner, her fingers pricked from the sharp diamond stars on the Duchess’s dusty wig, have many a harrowing encounter with clockwork ladies-in-waiting, despicable men servants, and ferocious bloodhounds.
Now all this may sound most juvenile, but here lies the surprise — Miss Bianca and its companions are written as much for adults as for children. The text is literate and full of delicious humor, the characters far more human than cute.
And Garth Williams’ exquisite illustrations are themselves worth the price of the book.
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Illustration by Garth Williams of Miss Bianca with Patience
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More about Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp
- Reader discussion on Goodreads
- Elegant (if Mousy) Miss Bianca
- Disneyfied or Disney-tried? The Rescuers vs. Miss Bianca
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Miss Bianca reimagined by Disney
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