"Mousetown"
Jodi Levine 92 PT and Margaret McCartney 91 IL have known each other since 1987 when they were friends and roommates at RISD.
At one point they were living together and taking a winter session class together and arguing like an old married couple. After graduating from Rhode Island School of Design, Levine returned to her native New York City and spent almost 20 years at Martha Stewart Living, where she used her unique ability to transform everyday items into inspiring ideas. (Think an Elizabethan princess costume made out of coffee filters or a parking garage for kids built entirely of recycled cardboard tubes and boxes.)
McCartney played guitar in a band called Tuscadero, which allowed her to tour the nation and avoid getting a real job for a few years before joining Jodi in New York City. There she began working in product design, also at Martha Stewart, and then later for a variety of clients including Kate Spade, Henri Bendel and she also started a kids clothing line, Winter Water Factory.
McCartney’s and Levine’s kids even shared a babysitter in Brooklyn, where they continued to be close and support each other’s creative endeavors. The pair have always found inspiration in kids’ books like Stuart Little, The Borrowers, Little Fur Family, She Was Nice to Mice, and Mouse House—all titles that feature fascinating, tiny worlds. But the real inspiration came long before they even met. “Mousetown is the book we both wished for when we were mouse- and mini-obsessed kids,” says Levine. When the pandemic hit, they started sharing projects on social media that showcased their shared love of mice, miniatures, and crafts—and the response was overwhelming. That was the start of their first book together, Mousetown (Union Square Kids). It’s a one-of-a-kind hybrid of storybook and craft book that lets kids follow Mouse’s day while learning to recreate the tiny scenes from recycled and household materials. It’s also a mixed-media affair. While Levine dreamed up the craft projects and built and photographed the winsome backgrounds, McCartney created and illustrated the charming characters and figured out how to seamlessly merge the two elements. It took them a lot of experimenting to get to the final clean and bright aesthetic that is now Mousetown and they even laid out the interior of the book. Mousetown was hand-made, hand-in-hand, by two long time friends—truly a labor of love.
(Margaret's husband helped with this writeup!)
