Where It All Goes Down
A Ship Traveling from America to England, 1897
We see glimpses of the Cranstons' home in the Hudson River Valley (in New York) and a sneak peek at Buckingham Palace (in London), but most of this book takes place on board a ship.
Since planes hadn't been invented in 1897, there's only one way to cross the ocean: by sea. So in this book we've got a big huge ship crossing the Atlantic. It's filled with nineteenth-century things like telegraphs (cool) and chamber pots (gross), and as a bonus there is a princess on board, too.
Now here's the deal with this ship: once the mice are on board, they're in for some pretty hectic scenery. Since the ship is filled with hundreds of humans, it's a super busy place to be, so finding their way through their new home is basically like living in an obstacle course:
We were this close to the doors of the kitchen—the galley—when they banged open. A line of enormous humans burst through and bore down on us. We skittered on the steel deck. Huge waiters in white coats carried trays of the dessert course, shoulder-high. Flaming puddings. I gave us up for dead. We'd been seen, and you dare never be.
[…]
The vast kitchens were a clashing of pans and far too many humans. We skirted it, moving through pantries to a storage room right at the end of the known world. We drew up by a tall pile of crated fruit. There in the shadows another shadow fell across us. (6.77, 88)
Yikes—this sounds like a seriously dangerous setting for our poor mice. Just check out how Helena describes her surroundings: "enormous humans," "clashing" pots and pans, and ominous "shadows"—even the desserts are on fire. And this passage doesn't even mention the mean ship cat. If the mice are going to make it in this new world, they're going to have to be careful in their new extra risky environment.
Now that's not to say our setting on the ship doesn't have any perks—after all, the mice do get to have tea in the princess's swanky parlor, and they get to dine with hundreds of other four-legged friends. So it's not all danger. But you never know when that ship cat or the flaming pudding is going to be just around the corner.