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Jul. 12th, 2014 11:04 amI've been meaning to reread Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH ever since that seeing that great Secret of NIMH festivid a couple years ago.
The last time I read Mrs. Frisby was probably when I was in elementary school, so I had actually forgotten ... most of what happens. There are some rats and some mice! SAD SICK BABY MICE. SINISTER EXPERIMENTS. MANY THINGS ARE CREEPY AND SAD. (This + Watership Down, which I should probably also reread some time, contributed to so many lingering creeped-out feelings about poison gas. Not ... that poison gas is not creepy anyway.)
What actually happens, for those of you who managed to miss this book in your childhoods or have likewise forgotten, is that one of Widowed Mouse Mrs. Frisby's baby mouse children is too sick to leave their house in the field, but if they don't leave the house in the field then they're all going to be run over by the farmer's plough, so Mrs. Frisby enlists the help of a local colony of escaped lab rats and is somewhat surprised to discover that they are also planning on setting up the first intelligent rat civilization somewhere down the road, assuming they are not re-captured by scientists first.
Anyway when I was younger I did not think to be particularly impressed by Mrs. Frisby as protagonist. But Mrs. Frisby is such a great protagonist! Literally everyone else in the book (...ok, every other rodent) has some kind of enhanced intelligence, with Extreme Tool-Using Abilities and +10 Reading Skills, which makes it actually kind of astoundingly important that Mrs. Frisby -- Least Special of All, no superpowers whatsoever, and a housewife/mother to boot -- is not only the POV character but unequivocally and without question the heroine. UNSPECIAL PROTAGONISTS ARE SO WONDERFUL.
Mrs. Frisby nostalgia party, anyone? MRS. FRISBY NOSTALGIA PARTY, GO.
The last time I read Mrs. Frisby was probably when I was in elementary school, so I had actually forgotten ... most of what happens. There are some rats and some mice! SAD SICK BABY MICE. SINISTER EXPERIMENTS. MANY THINGS ARE CREEPY AND SAD. (This + Watership Down, which I should probably also reread some time, contributed to so many lingering creeped-out feelings about poison gas. Not ... that poison gas is not creepy anyway.)
What actually happens, for those of you who managed to miss this book in your childhoods or have likewise forgotten, is that one of Widowed Mouse Mrs. Frisby's baby mouse children is too sick to leave their house in the field, but if they don't leave the house in the field then they're all going to be run over by the farmer's plough, so Mrs. Frisby enlists the help of a local colony of escaped lab rats and is somewhat surprised to discover that they are also planning on setting up the first intelligent rat civilization somewhere down the road, assuming they are not re-captured by scientists first.
Anyway when I was younger I did not think to be particularly impressed by Mrs. Frisby as protagonist. But Mrs. Frisby is such a great protagonist! Literally everyone else in the book (...ok, every other rodent) has some kind of enhanced intelligence, with Extreme Tool-Using Abilities and +10 Reading Skills, which makes it actually kind of astoundingly important that Mrs. Frisby -- Least Special of All, no superpowers whatsoever, and a housewife/mother to boot -- is not only the POV character but unequivocally and without question the heroine. UNSPECIAL PROTAGONISTS ARE SO WONDERFUL.
Mrs. Frisby nostalgia party, anyone? MRS. FRISBY NOSTALGIA PARTY, GO.
