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Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents (Hardcover)

by Terry Pratchett (Author)

4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Doubleday UK (Dec 11 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385601239
ISBN-13: 978-0385601238
Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 14.6 x 2.8 cm
Shipping Weight: 400 g

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #355,337 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
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#47 in Books > Children's Books > Authors & Illustrators, A-Z > ( P ) > Pratchett, Terry

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Product Description

From Amazon.co.uk

Terry Pratchett returns to children's stories and to his infamous Discworld with Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, a clever spin on the Pied Piper fairytale with a lavish sprinkling of the Practchett magic.

Maurice is a talking cat who leads a band of rather special rats from town to town to fake invasions of vermin. Keith, in cahoots with Maurice, turns up with his flute and leads the rats out of town--a hefty reward in tow. It's a scam that works perfectly... until they arrive in the town of Bad Blintz and their ruse is sussed by the young girl Malicia. Maurice and his mice realise they are about to be caught in the middle of something rather bad.

This is a fresh and funny adventure story that allows Pratchett to make free use of his immense comic talents (the talking rats are easily some of his most hilarious creations). It's also full of cute little ideas: the mice take their names from cans and packets lying in rubbish dumps, so we have heroes called "Big Savings" and "Best Before".

Terry Pratchett has created a wonderful, old-fashioned tale where the subtle morals and lessons never hinder the action. Younger children may initially struggle with Mr Pratchett's unusual style, but once they get to grips with the humour, this will be a laugh-a-minute for both kids and their parents. (Ages 8 and over) --Jon Weir

Books in Canada

Winner of the 2001 Carnegie Award for the Best Children's Book of the Year, Pratchett spins an amazing tale of a motley band of talking rats, looking to find a rat paradise where they can start a civilized society, and lead by an ingenious and constantly conniving cat, Maurice, who is always looking at an opportunity to take advantage of gullible humanity. Maurice is a wonderful rogue, always coming up with a new scam, but even he isn't prepared to face the evil that lurks at the heart of the little town of Bad Blintz. Pratchett inventively uses the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin as well as an array of folk and fairy tale motifs to create a novel that is dazzlingly hilarious, horrifically frightening and poignantly touching-a tour de force from every angle.
Jeffrey Canton (Books in Canada)

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews

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4.3 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, Oct 30 2008

By	TeensReadToo.com "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents (Paperback)

I have always been told that, as a fan of fantasy and humor, I needed to read Terry Pratchett. And after reading THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS, I now understand what everyone was talking about. Pratchett's style is simultaneously witty, entertaining, and incisive; he succeeds in this children's book in saying more about society than most adult books ever manage, and he does so while making you laugh out loud.

Set in an obscure corner of Discworld, the fantasy world in which Pratchett has written numerous other books for adults, a cat named Maurice discovers suddenly the ability to talk--and not just to talk, but to think and to reason. Maurice believes himself to be the only animal afflicted with this talent, until he discovers a group of rats living in the city dump who have also miraculously achieved the ability of speech and thought. As Maurice is emphatic about his promise to never eat anything that can talk, he and the talking rats get along rather well. Soon, along with the help of an orphan boy named Keith who was raised by a musician's guild, Maurice sets upon a scheme to make some easy money, and the rats go along in their belief that they may someday find a place where they will be free to live as talking rats without the fear of being hunted by humans.

Maurice's plan is simple. If the rats will go and infest a town, wreaking havoc for the space of a few days, the town leaders will be sure to call a rat piper to remove the rats from the town. Then it's Keith's job to show up, pipe the rats away, and receive a generous fee for his troubles, one that the rats and Maurice will share. Keith, Maurice, and the rats go like this from town to town...until they reach the town of Bad Blintz, and everything stops working as planned.

The story is populated by humorous characters that you can't help but take seriously. Maurice's sly cunning is undermined by the fact that he meticulously questions any rat he comes across before eating it, in order to keep up his first promise to the talking rats. The rats themselves are amusing individuals, self-named after the first things they could read in that city dump where they originated, so that the story is populated by creatures who go by Hamnpork, Darktan, Sardines, and Dangerous Beans. But under these hilarious names, they are at heart a people trying to figure out their own origins and explain the things they don't yet understand about their sudden ability to speak, and what that means for their future.

I would recommend this book to anyone who's not afraid to laugh, and anyone who's not afraid to think hard about the ramifications of being a person--or rat, or cat--capable of speech, thought, and reason.

Reviewed by: Candace Cunard

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4.0 out of 5 stars The not-so-amazing Maurice?, Jun 3 2003

By	Cody Dobie (Vancouver, BC Canada) - See all my reviews

From the first few pages of 'The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents', it was clear to me that this book was filled to the brim with wit and charm. Just the very premise is intriguing from the start, and I found myself laughing out loud at several moments throughout the reading of this book. Unfortunately, the book fails to explore of its possibilities, and when I had finished, I felt dissatisfied.

Set in Discworld, which anyone who has ever read a book by Terry Pratchett will be familiar with, a strangely clever tomcat by the name of Maurice moves from town-to-town along with his similarly educated rats, and, as the book often describes him, a Stupid-looking kid named Kieth.

What takes place on their arrival in each town is a scam durative to the familiar tale of the Pied Piper. The rats run loose through the town, being so utterly nasty, that the mayor of the town is only too willing to pay Kieth to lure them out of town with his music. Maurice takes the money, with the promise to split it later, and they continue to the next town--the perfect scam... that is, until they reach the town of Bad Blintz.

The Rats communicate with each other often throughout the book (they are, argueably, the main characters), and often bring up the 'ethics' of the scam they are helping Maurice pull-off--an unfortunate result of their newly aqquired knowledge. This prepared me for a possible revolt--possibly the Rats rising against Maurice and trying to thwart his scam before he can continue. Sadly, Mr. Pratchett avoids the difficult route, and ends the book with a rather long, drawn-out, somewhat anticlimatic ending. In the meantime, the book is filled with several subplots, none of which do the book any good.

'Amazing Maurice' has only its wit and charm to stand on--without it, it really isn't as amazing as you'd expect.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A cat, some rats, and some stupid looking humans..., April 23 2003

By	Jonathan Burgoine "bookseller" (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents (Paperback)

This was a really cute story. Basically, a bunch of rats, snacking on wizardly refuse, attain sentience. They also hook up with a sentient cat. They can all speak, learn, and chat with each other, and at the Cat's devious notion, dupe a "stupid looking kid" to play the role of a rat-piper, moving from city to city where the rats act up, the Piper comes in and clears the rats out, and they all get paid.

This time, however, they've stumbled into a town where there's something really evil going on, and all the wisecracking cats, tapdancing rats, and stupid-looking kids in the world might just be in over their heads.

Well written, with a bit of whimsy in nearly every chapter, this was my introduction to the Discworld series, and I dare say I'll be back. The wonderful observations from the rats point of view are fantastic (there's a great part where one of the rats is asked something along the lines of: "Do you know what animal swarms into a place, breeds terribly, spoils everything they can't use and wastes everything they can until there's nothing left?" and the rat says, "Sure. Humans.")

The story gets a bit dark in places for a young reader, though a teen would probably get a laugh. And the mythology lover in me adores the play on the Pied Piper of Hamelin - like Orson Scott Card's "Enchantment" did for Sleeping Beauty, Pratchett did here for the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

'Nathan

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