Once upon a time in a far away country, there lived a king. He lived in a beautiful palace. He had everything he liked. He liked cheese best of all.

So begins Nancy and Eric Gurney’s wonderful picture book, “The King, the Mice, and the Cheese.”

In the book, the king’s cheese-makers make the best cheese in all the land. It also smelled great. Everyone in the land can smell the delicious aroma, including a mouse who tells his friends about it. Soon the palace is invaded by hoards of mice who enjoy living with the king and eating his cheese.

The king is not happy, so he asks his wise men how to get rid of the mice. Simple, they tell the king, and bring in a load of cats to chase away the mice. This works, but — wouldn’t you just know it — it leads to an even worse problem: the palace is now overrun by cats. The king is not happy and again consults with his wise men, who again have a ready answer. They bring in dogs to chase away the cats.

But now there are dogs everywhere. The wise men use lions to chase away the dogs, which, as you can imagine, turns out to be a terrible idea. So they use elephants to chase away the lions.

What do you suppose is brought in to scare away the elephants? Mice. And the king works out a deal with the mice, who agree not to eat all the cheese and who develop excellent table manners.

The King, the Mice, and the Cheese is a fun book to read to young children, and Eric Gurney’s illustrations are delightful, but I question the idea that elephants are afraid of mice. Cartoons often depict this as being so, with a large pachyderm perched on a chair, cowering at the sight of a tiny white rodent.

A fear of mice and rats is called musophobia — phobia for fear, and mus being the Latin word for mouse. Some people use the French word for mouse, souris, making the word suriphobia. Others use murophobia, Muridae being the family that encompasses mice and rats. Whatever you call it, elephants don’t have it.

In fact, elephants are some of the most fearless animals on Earth. Even lions don’t intimidate them. But elephants can’t see very well and are startled by noises and sudden movements that they can’t readily identify.

A scurrying mouse can make an elephant back away. But so can a little dog or cat or rabbit or chipmunk or any small animal that darts about.

Hold any of these animals up to an elephant so it can get a decent look, and the elephant won’t go eeek! and run away. It will act bored, as if to say so what.

Don’t let that bit of information spoil The King, the Mice, and the Cheese for you. If your local library doesn’t have a copy, YouTube has videos of parents reading it to their children.