Emma Watson moves on from "Harry Potter" to play Princess Pea

Hermione, don't move! Someone's put an Engorgement Charm on a rat, and he's about to eat your hand off! Let me just get my wand. Finite Incantatem! Finite Incantatem! What's going on? It won't shrink! It must be Dark Magic!

I'm only kidding. I know that's not a rat; it's a mouse. In fact, it's my favorite mouse from my favorite (non-Harry Potter) children's book written in the last ten years: The Tale of Despereaux.

Universal's animated tellling of Kate DiCamillo's Newberry Award-winning book opens this weekend. Emma Watson voices Princess Pea, the daughter of a widowed king who, in his grief over his deceased wife, outlaws both soup and rats. (It seems like a peripheral detail — the rats and the soup — but it becomes really important.) Princess Pea's gentleness and affection cause little Desperaux Tilling, a tiny mouse with enormous ears, to fall quite hopelessly and recklessly in love with her.

"You have lovely ears," the Pea said to him. "They are like small pieces of velvet."

Despereaux thought he might faint with the pleasure of someone referring to his ears as small and lovely. He laid his tail against the Pea's wrist to steady himself and he felt the princess's pulse, the pounding of her heart, and his own immediately took up the rhythm of hers.

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