Retold from: Luis Coloma

Luis Coloma was a Spanish writer and priest, the author of the tale of Ratón Pérez, the little mouse.

He was born in 1851 in Jerez de la Frontera, wrote novels and stories, and was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. Coloma died in 1915.

In the 1890s he wrote the tale of Ratón Pérez for the boy king Alfonso XIII, who had lost a milk tooth. The book “Ratón Pérez” came out in Madrid in 1911. Thanks to Coloma, children in Spain and Latin America put a lost tooth under the pillow for Ratoncito Pérez. A small Ratón Pérez museum stands in Madrid, on calle del Arenal.

Here you can read “Perez the Mouse”: how Perez the mouse leads the little king Bubi by night to a poor boy named Gilito.