The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents – Terry Pratchett

Author: Terry Pratchett
Title: The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
Publisher: Doubleday
Publication Date: 2001
Age range: 10 - 14
Genre: Revised Fairytale / Fantasy
Rating: 1 2 3 4 5

Plot summary: Exposed to some sort of magical compound outside the Unseen University where wizards create strange potions and then dump the resulting waste out the back door, a large group of rats find themselves suddenly able to think and speak. Maurice, a local alleycat who eats one of the rats who ate some bit of potion-covered rubbish, also finds himself able to reason and plot how to get a more comfortable life for himself. Maurice rounds up the rats, finds a boy with a pipe, and hatches a plan to make money in a series of villages. The rats, completely sensible of what they're doing, run amuck in each village until the boy and Maurice show up and the boy plays his pipe for a fee, at which point the smart rats follow him out of the village. Easy money.

The rats, however, start to question the scheme, and want to take their share of the money and find a spot where they can live in peace, away from humans. Maurice talks them all into one last show, but unfortunately the village they descend on has its own plague already in place. A couple of men who style themselves as Ratcatchers are taking advantage of the villagers' fears of losing their stores of food to a homegrown horde of rats that is in fact not running free: the Ratcatchers have stolen all the food and locked up all the rats. Selling the food back bit by bit to the hungry villagers and breeding the biggest rats in order to provide a good show to men who bring their dogs to kill rats in an underground betting ring, the Ratcatchers have their own scheme firmly in place.

With the help of the mayor's daughter, Malicia, the piper boy and Maurice find a way to help the villagers, free the captive rats, and defeat the evil forces that are undermining the community. The rats decide they'd like to stay in the village, and reveal themselves as thinking, speaking creatures to the people. In return for keeping the village free of normal rats, the clever ones would just like to be treated fairly. The book ends with the struggle of the humans and rats to find a balance where they will all be respected and treated as equal. And Maurice skips town, finds himself another piper boy, and moves on to his next adventure.

Comments: I have read a number of Pratchett's fantasy works for adults in the Discworld series. I laud the concept of adapting some of the adventures to be had in the Discworld for the young adult audience. However, as an entry point into Pratchett's adult fiction, I think this story fails to convey the richness and inherent humor of Pratchett's alternate universe. Although the story is clever and there are moments of fun, this novel didn't grip this reader's attention well. Because this tale needed to exist independently of the other works in the Discworld series, much of the potential enjoyment of the world Pratchett has created is squandered. I think that the reading level caters to the lower end of the young adult scale, as the story is not overly complex; older readers will recognize the roots of the plot in the old fable about the Pied Piper.

Dates Read: 17 – 19 February