Rats

I should take a few moments to compliment Terry Pratchett for The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. As I've come to expect, PTerry's children's books are great reading for adults. I guess you'd describe this one as The Pied Piper told from a rat's perspective, with a dash of Dick Whittington thrown in for good measure. The plot is much more than a simple fairy tale, with recognisable plot elements drawn from a wide range of literature. The idea of a rat piper is just one building block that he uses to build a well-crafted story.

The outstanding feature of the book was the transformation of the educated rodents through the events of the story. There were lots of transitions all going on at once: growth of self understanding and self acceptance, religious enlightenment, social empowerment, modification of impossible dreams into realistic futures, and breaking down human-rat prejudices. It was a story that left me feeling satisfied. One of the things that PTerry does well is to caricature human traits and attitudes in fantasy settings. In this book, the rats are very rat-like and the reader is drawn into a rat-centric view of the world, but at the same time, all the interactions and politics are clearly very perceptive comments on human behaviour.