Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
by Robert C. O'Brien

Aladdin Paperbacks
ISBN-13:978-0-689-20651-1

Mrs. Frisby, a mouse, is a loving, widowed mother of four children: her youngest daughter, Cynthia, her older daughter, Teresa, her oldest son, Martin, and her younger son, Timothy. Her son Timothy becomes very ill with pneumonia and, with moving day coming up, her family has to move their summer quarters (home) immediately or they will be ripped apart by the farmer’s lawn mower. Fortunately for them, after talking to a friendly owl, she has been told about very helpful group of “lab” rats called the rats of NIMH, which are an outstanding group of highly intelligent rats who were captured and experimented on, who race to formulate a solution to her dilemma that could save them from a gruesome fate.

Robert C. O’Brien has done an incredible job at giving distinguishing details about the story and the characters as well. He has given such good descriptions of each of the characters that he actually attached me to some of them, which in turn made me feel like I was right there with the characters! The story and the tale were well told because he had picked up the plot of the story quickly.

O’Brien has made the characters optimistic so that they never give up. This made them able to accomplish the impossible, which is the main goal of fantasies (making things that seem impossible believable), by having an owl being friendly to a mouse and having rats have an immense knowledge of many things such as sleeping potions.

The cliffhangers in this book made it very hard to put down. I was at the edge of my seat about what going on in every single chapter. I would give in to the suspense at the end of the chapters and continue to read the book, which would lead to more cliffhangers, such as the point where Mrs. Frisby bravely enters an owl’s home and asks the owl for help even though she knew that the owl could have eaten her at any moment.

The themes hope and trust had been proven in the early, middle, and ending chapters of the book. Such as when Mr. Ages had to trust and hope that Mrs. Frisby knew exactly what to do and how to do it when she risked her life to help her son and the Rats of NIMH by sneaking into the farm house and putting a sleeping powder in the cat’s food dish.

I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoys fantasies between the ages of 9 and 11. Also to anybody who would enjoy a book with cliffhangers and suspense. I would rate this book a 9.5 because of the storyline, distinguishing details, and character descriptions. This book has been around for nearly forty years after winning the Newberry medal. This book, I have to admit, is probably one of the best fantasy stories that I have ever read and could read it over and over again.

~ reviewed by Max