Word of Mouse is a 2016 children's novel written by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein and illustrated by Joe Sutphin.
Isaiah is a Lab Animal living in a lab with his family, yearning for freedom. One day, Isiah managed to gain it, being able to escape from the lab. Unfortunately, he was the only one. Undeterred, however, he promises to return and find a way to rescue them as well.
In the outside world, Isaiah manages to get lucky and find another family of mice who welcome him with open arms. It helps that one of theirs, a female mouse with a beautiful singing voice named Mikayla, has caught Isaiah's eye. He even eventually makes a human friend, a little girl called Hailey. With their help, Isaiah may have just what he needs to rescue his family.
Word of Mouse contains examples of:
- Animal Testing: Isaiah and his family live in a lab where they're used for testing purposes.
- Color-Coded Characters: The scientists in the lab genetically dyed the fur colours of Isaiah and his family to better organize them. Isaiah's fur is blue, and he has a relative with red fur.
- Creepy Hairless Animal: Lucifer, the security guard's family's pet cat, is a hairless sphynx cat.
- Interspecies Friendship: Isaiah is a mouse, and Hailey is a human. They become friends after Isaiah comes to her house. It soon extends to other members of the mouse family too.
- Jabba Table Manners: The lab security guard and his family constantly drop food on the floor whenever they eat meals.
- Meaningful Name: Lucifer the cat is a villainous cat who is always trying to eat Isaiah.
- Pun-Based Title: An obvious play on the phrase "word of mouth".
- Talking Animal: Isaiah has the ability to speak to humans... provided said humans are willing to listen to him anyway.
- Uplifted Animal: One of the boons Isaiah got from being tested on is that he can read and write words, and communicate with humans.
- You Are Number 6: In addition to having their fur genetically dyed, all the mice at the lab (Isaiah included) have tags on their ear with a serial number on it. Isaiah's number is 97.
