Who's Talking?

How many of the mice in Mousenet (due out November 8^th) have been trained to talk? Not many. There’s no point even trying to make human sounds unless you were born with a certain floppiness of the lips and jaw known as Talk-Mouth. Young mice with this rare genetic trait get whisked away to the Talking Academy in San Francisco, where they learn to speak with the help of human movies or television shows. Trey, or Talking Mouse Three, studied programs like The Simpsons, which means he’s on the same linguistic wavelength as Megan and other ten-year-old American kids. On the other hand Sir Quentin, or Talking Mouse Five, preferred the costume dramas of Masterpiece Theater on public television, which gave him a British accent and a style of conversation that never uses a short word where a long one will do, a style that he promises will be “Appropriate, nay, even improving, for a young lady of the human persuasion.”