Gino Badino

This is a really cute story with a good lesson. It is about an Italian mouse family in the pasta-making business (how much cuter can you get!) Gino is a school-age mouse who doesn't like to do work in the family business such as sweep floors after school. From his boredom with floor sweeping, he gets distracted with a piece of dough and makes all sorts of little creature-creations with pieces of discarded dough. Gino becomes so entranced with his dough creations that he spends most of his non-school time with it, including taking some into the bathtub with him. One night, Gino overhears his father talking and saying how the family pasta business is not doing well and that the big companies can make more per hour than his small family business. His father decides to try to make more pasta and sell it for less, but, as the family is already working as hard as possible, they don't know how that can happen. Gino decides to rescue the family business by sneaking into the pasta kitchen and making lots of pasta on his own, only to make a huge disasterous mess. The family spends all night madly cleaning up the kitchen and trying to quickly package a shipment of pasta, but in the process, some of his pasta creations get packaged, and Gino notices a pasta-shaped mouse inside a package of pasta ready for shipment, but doesn't want to get more in trouble after his disaster, so he stays quiet. In the end, a store owner comes by the Badino business and tells Gino's father that the pasta animal shapes that customers found in their boxes were a huge hit, and customers want to collect them! So Gino's job goes from sweeping floors to making pasta-animal creations for customer to collect!! Really fun story , with adorable illustrations. Good virtues about working together, hard work, family business, overcoming hardship, resourcefulness, creativity, sticking together, etc. It also teaches a lot about economics and family-operated businesses.