Stuart Little isn’t who you think he is and fans were shocked to learn that in E.B. White’s 1945 children’s book Stuart Little, the titular character isn’t a mouse as depicted in the films, but a human child who looks like a mouse.
In White’s 1945 book, the character has a much different origin story, as the beginning of the book reads, “When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.”
“The truth of the matter was, the baby looked very much like a mouse in every way,” the book’s intro continues.
“He was only about two inches high; and he had a mouse’s sharp nose, a mouse’s tail, a mouse’s whiskers, and the pleasant, shy manner of a mouse.”
The novel noted that when Stuart was “many days old,” he both looked like a mouse and acted like one as well, albeit “wearing a gray hat and carrying a small cane.”
Fan rushed to social media to express their surprise, one X user @aingeth commented; “That is disturbing, tiny 2 inch humans freak me out.’’, another @Projectionarte said “.Betrayal!’’, @Sam said, “..so he is not a human boy who looks ‘mousey’, as in big ears , buck teeth, but a literal miniature human…lol”
Film critic Chris Evangelista tweeted: “I’ve just now learned that in the STUART LITTLE book, Stuart is not actually a mouse but a human boy who looks like a mouse, and I don’t know how to process this,”
And while the film reimagined the character as being adopted, the suggestion was originally given to White shortly after the book’s release by his boss Harold Ross, who said the author had “made one serious mistake” in having the character ‘born’ into the family, the writer eventually took the reception to heart.
So the first editions of Stuart Little had it written that the character had actually been “born” to the Littles, but, in later editions, White changed the novel’s beginning to say he had “arrived” to them instead.