Summary:
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is a strange, fictional animal story that takes place in Discworld. It is about a cat named Maurice that leads a group of rats, the cat was normal until he ate one rat that ate waste of Unseen University, which is what turned the rats into rats that can talk with incredible intelligence. Maurice is now a talking cat, whom is also filled with intelligence and he leads the rats. This group is led by a piper named Keith and they share the money with the piper who leads them from town to town. The group is not exactly the happiest group there is. The leader of the rats despises Maurice, while a near-blind albino rat wants to make a rat civilization. The albino rat-Dangerous Beans, and Peaches, do not like the trickery of the rest of the group and they find it unethical. They meet a mayor's daughter, in a town where most the people eat rats more than anywhere, and she soon finds the animals can talk. The rats are following a book called "Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure," which makes them curious about rats and humans living together. They soon learn from the mayor's daughter that it is a fictional book, and Peaches and Dangerous Beans gets saddened by it. There is a powerful rat king named Spider, made out of eight rats, and many things happen. Only time will tell what will come of Maurice and his Educated Rodents.
Evaluation:
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents was a very odd story to me, and coming from an adult perspective, I think it is definitely more for children. This, unlike the last book we read, is less like a story for anyone, and more aimed to the younger crowd. I would say around 7-11 years old would probably enjoy it, but that's what I think. My personal favorite part of the story, is just the idea of the rats and how they named each other based off of random things that were around them before they gained the ability to talk. I like that the rats and humans do end up living peacefully in the end, but the rat king really kind of creeped me out.
I was actually sad, in the end, that Maurice left the group to find another human to bother. I enjoyed that the rats had a sort of "humane" way about them, and they were all very humanistic. One was against Maurice, two wanted things to be right and understood how some things were unethical that Maurice and some of the other rats were doing. This book was personally not my favorite, nor was it really a book I would want to read again.
I see that there are other Discworld book, and I know that this one doesn't really relate to those, but maybe that would help me enjoy this book more if I had known of the other ones and had at least looked over them a bit. This book was just a little bit too odd for me, but I think children would enjoy it. I think those kids that really enjoy talking animals and the existence of another world would really enjoy this. I think the 9-11 year olds would like it the most and would probably want to read the other stories, I just didn't think that this story was all that entertaining either. Overall, I would recommend this book for 7-11 year olds and that's about it, or anyone who likes the shorter other world, with weird talking animals books.
Mischief Managed.
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