Module 4: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Hello, I'm Richard Nimz, prospector of the written word and literary explorer extraordinaire.  My second, and last, Newbery award winner is a good book that also has a movie based on the series (two actually).  Whereas the movie based on the Chronicles of Prydain series is divisive in terms of whether it was good or not, almost everyone agrees about how to rank the movies (first is good, second is bad).  This book is Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, winner of the Newbery award for 1972.

Citation: O'Brien, Robert C. (1994).  Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.  Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace.

Summary: Mrs. Jonathan Frisby is a regular field mouse, who was widowed several years earlier and whose son, Timothy, now suffers from pneumonia.  While she was ordered to keep Timothy indoors, soon the plow will come and destroy their home.  Desperate, she is sent to the rats living in the rosebush for help moving her house to the lee of the big stone, where it will be safe.  Once there, she finds a story of genetic experimentation and escape, a story involving her late husband.

Impressions: This was a good book, although I consider the movie to be better.  Mrs. Frisby is not given a first name of her own in the book, which is somewhat annoying.  Also, the book seems to dawdle a little on the tests the rats go through.  However, that is all trivial compared to the book's successes.  The story is interesting, as well as the world of the rats.  Also, perhaps showing what kind of tests the rats go through can do some good: it's just mazes with small electric shocks being the worst things the rats go through.  To borrow from Eclectic Indulgence: "I believe this is a great book for children as well as adults - one filled with both magic and meaning that all can take something from."

Sources:

(29 May, 2012) Eclectic Indulgence... classic literature reviews: Review: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O'Brien. Eclectic Indulgence. Retrieved from http://eclectic-indulgence.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-mrs-frisby-and-rats-of-nimh-by.html