Three Little Mice Sat Down to Spin, from the series Three Young Rats and Other Rhymes

Alexander Calder made a series of 85 drawings to illustrate Three Young Rats and Other Rhymes, a whimsical book of anonymous nursery-rhymes edited by James Johnson Sweeney and published by the dealer Curt Valentin in 1944. The artist’s playful and sometimes humorous interpretations of the rhymes are rendered in a simplified and continuous linear style. These compositions recall Calder’s imaginative wire sculptures, impressively formed out of single pieces of thin wire to resemble line drawings in three-dimensional space.

The corresponding rhyme for this drawing reads:
Three little mice sat down to spin.
Pussy passed by and she peeped in.
“What are you at, my fine little men?”
“Making coats for gentlemen.”
“Shall I come in and cut off your threads?”
“Oh no, Mistress Pussy, you’d bite off our heads!”