Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

I’ve been reading Pratchett for years and I still can’t get enough. Since his death, I’ve been filling in my library’s gaps with the few books of his that I had somehow missed. This story isn’t great, but it is very good. I suppose you could call it a stand-alone story within the Discworld novels. There’s the characteristic irreverence and humor, along with some adventure and misadventure, culminating in a satisfactory moral as everything ties up somewhat neatly in a bow. If you’ve never read a Pratchett book. This would be a good introduction. If you have, then it’s a good read to add to your list.

Terry Pratchett remains one of my all time favorite authors, but I agree with Patrick Rothfuss that this is not one of his best books. It is indeed funny, scary, and well written, like all Pratchett books, but like most Pratchett books, it goes on a tad too long and could have used some editing. They also say it is his first Discworld book, but I’m not sure why–unless they’re saying it for marketing reasons–for it is unlike the other books in that series. All this aside, I would highly recommend it.

I discovered Pratchett when I was in high school in the 1980s and have been a Pratchett evangelist ever since. I now have my kids hooked on Pratchett and have read every Practhett novel at least 3 times. “The Amazing Maurice” is one of my perennial favourites.

Think Pied Piper on steroids and you have the faintest gleamings of ‘The Amazing Maurice’. Pratchett is the master satirist. He uses the story to deliver a message, and even some history. The rats history closely parallels human history; and the problems they face are the same as what we face. Pratchett is brilliant – I honestly don’t think there is a living writer who can touch him. In the midst of humour he throws in deep philosophical arguments and statements.
Here is one of my favourite lines from this novel: ‘If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.’
‘And what if your story doesn’t work?’
‘You keep changing it until you find one that does.’

The cherry on the top for me is the name of the rats- Additives, Big Savings, Sardines, and Hamnpork, all taken from the items around them when they learnt to read!

Pick this book up, claim it is for the kids, but keep it for yourself.

This book is set in Discworld, but the only major Discworld characters who make an appearance are Death and the Death of Rats. So, if someone has not read any of the Discworld series, they could still enjoy this book immensely.
It’s a fantasy about some rats and a cat who become intelligent enough to talk following consuming some garbage from Unseen University. They travel around with a boy who plays a pipe, bringing a “plague of rats” from town to town, then getting rid of said plague for a low, low price. The rats become uneasy about the fraudulent nature of their business, and the cat (who acts as manager) promises that the next town will be the last. What they find in the next town is different from anything in their experience, and requires all their intelligence to survive.
This would be a good read for anyone 10 and up. Perhaps a really savvy 8-year-old could deal with it if he/she has an intelligent cat to explain the difficult bits.

Terry Prachett, I heart you and your takes on famous tales. This one in the Discworld series is a real stand-aloner. Prachett takes on the “Tale of the Pied Piper” with the aplomb you’d expect, but he tackles this with a grace I found surprisingly appetizing. You don’t need to read a single other Discworld novel to enjoy this one, though it does appear to take place in the same mulit-verse as his other works.

This is a very grown-up story, though it was awarded the Carnegie Award for Children’s Literature in 2001. This award is a British medal not at all equivalent to our Caldecott; its other winners include Neil Gamon, so you know they love a ^$&@)-up story with gruesome grown-up bits to it. The Amazing Maurice….has just that: %$@&)-up bits that are VERY grown up. In this version of the famous tale, the rats have eaten from the Wizards’ trash heap. Because they’ve ingested magical substances, they’ve become intelligent (a la Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM and Flowers for Algernon). And as they became intelligent on a trash heap, they learned to read there. So they took amusing names from food labels like “Hamnpork” and “Peaches” and “Dangerous Beans”. Then enters the Maurice of the title, a common stupid alley cat who eats one of the rats (BEFORE the cat became intelligent), thereby ingesting the magical substances second hand and then becoming enchanted, too. (He always asks his food if it can talk before he eats it thereafter).

What results is an amalgam of Puss In Boots and other tales, but only as Prachett could imagine them. Maurice is still very much a cat, so he’s cruel and shiftless and selfish by nature. The rats are developing a sense of morality he doesn’t seem capable of grasping. And the most cruel of all creatures, man, is revealed to be the least intelligent of all. This just makes me love Prachett even more, if that’s possible.

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