Stuart Little

Summary

Stuart Little is the second son of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick C. Little of New York City, and from his arrival he is only about two inches tall and looks in every way like a mouse. The family, including his older brother George, treat him as one of themselves, and Stuart is courteous, neatly dressed in tiny clothes, and full of enterprise. His size makes him useful: he is lowered on a string down the bathtub drain to recover his mother's ring, and he helps with things too small for anyone else. It also puts him in danger. The family's cat, Snowbell, resents him, and one morning Stuart is rolled up inside a window shade while his worried family search the mouse hole for him. On a trip to Central Park, Stuart meets Dr. Carey, a dentist who sails model boats on the pond, and takes the helm of his schooner, the Wasp, in a race against the Lillian B. Womrath. Through squalls, a floating paper bag and a near collision, Stuart steers the Wasp to victory. One winter day a small bird named Margalo, half frozen, is taken into the Little household. Stuart loves her at once and guards her from Snowbell. When Stuart is shut in a garbage can, dumped onto a garbage scow and carried out to sea, Margalo flies out and carries him back to safety. In spring Snowbell plots with an Angora cat to eat Margalo; a pigeon warns her with a note, and she flies away in the night without saying where. Heartbroken, Stuart sets out to find her. Dr. Carey gives him a tiny automobile, and he drives north out of the city. In one town he meets a school superintendent who needs a substitute and teaches a class for a day, and instead of arithmetic and spelling he leads the class in a discussion of what laws they would make if he were Chairman of the World. In the town of Ames' Crossing he hears of Harriet Ames, a girl no bigger than he is, and writes inviting her to go canoeing on the river at evening. He buys a souvenir birchbark canoe and fits it out, but when Harriet arrives the canoe has been damaged and leaks; Stuart is so dejected that the evening ends badly and she goes home. In the final chapter he stops to talk with a telephone repairman, who tells him that north is a good direction to travel, and Stuart drives on toward the north, still searching. The book does not say whether he finds Margalo. Harper & Brothers published it in October 1945 with drawings by Garth Williams, his first illustrated book, over the objections of the New York Public Library's influential children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore.

Top Lessons

• Small does not mean less

  Stuart is two inches tall in a city built for people, yet he wins a boat race, teaches a class and drives across the country. White never pretends his size is no difficulty; he shows a small person meeting large difficulties with courage and good manners.

• Friendship that goes looking

  Margalo saves Stuart from the garbage scow, and when she disappears he leaves home to find her. The whole second half of the book is a search made out of loyalty to a friend.

• Disappointment and keeping on

  The canoe evening with Harriet goes wrong, and Stuart's sulking makes it worse. The next morning he is on the road again. The book lets a hero be disappointed and even foolish, and still shows him choosing to go on.

• An ending that points forward

  White ends with Stuart still searching. The last chapter is about direction and hope rather than arrival, which leaves readers to imagine what comes next.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

No medical content of note. Dr. Carey is a dentist, but he appears as a model-boat sailor and the giver of Stuart's car, not in his practice; Stuart's unusual birth is told as plain fact with no medical framing, and the revised first sentence (arrived for born) was a matter of taste, not of medicine.