Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (ISBN 0-590-75803-9) is a children's book by Virginia Lee Burton.

The town's selectmen – who believe the work would take a hundred men a week – hire Mike and Mary Anne, expecting to get their new cellar at no cost.

She had written Mike and Mary Anne into a literal corner -- they were stuck in the hole they dug for the Town Hall basement.

"[2]In 1990, HBO first aired an animated short film adapted from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, directed by Michael Sporn,[4] adapted and narrated by stand-up comedian Robert Klein, and produced by Michael Sporn Animation and Italtoons Corporation.

[5] In 2006, Weston Woods Studios adapted the book to an animated film narrated by David De Vries, and directed by Leigh Corra.