Unraveling as a story within a story, there are a lot of really interesting characters presented who each provide missing pieces for the “secret” storyline, and/or serve to better contextualize the greater world of sentient animals living on the farm. It's hard to imagine anyone not being moved by "The Rats of Nimh" and its characters are well-developed and not easily forgotten. Furthermore, reading serves as a gateway for the rats to discover that humans dislike them because they steal. I love it when the narrator is so good that the listening experience flows without any glitches from something annoying that the listener has to consciously ignore. In a retrospective essay about the Newbery Medal-winning books from 1966 to 1975, children's author John Rowe Townsend wrote: "It seems to me that the fact that all the animals talk and behave intelligently from the beginning of the story detracts from the spectacular development of the laboratory rats.

Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a pleasing book, but I find it mildly frustrating; it might have been something more than it is". The story has aged really well because there isn't anything to date it, like mentioning popular fashion choices of the time, so really anyone can read it. I got the book again later in life and this has culminated in reading it aloud to my 5 yr old son (*with only a few slight edits/explanations of the more complicated passages). While there he studied piano at Eastman School of Music, and at one time considered being a musician.Conly, Jane Leslie 1947-" The Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English, edited by Victor Watson, Cambridge University Press, 1st edition, 2001.

The second class was a modern history class where the professor announced, "Modern history is anything that has happened while I have been alive. After the death of O'Brien, his daughter, Jane Leslie Conly, wrote two other novels based on the rats of NIMH. After Mrs Frisby saves a young crow from being attacked by the farm cat, and he hears her problem, he suggests that she ask for wisdom from the wise Owl, who suggests she ask for help from the Rats.In essence, Sanders finds that O'Brien promotes reading as an empowering tool which is an important lesson that children learn through reading this book. In my review, I compared the book and the movie and concluded that although they were quite different, I loved them both. He listened intently to chapters at bedtime, engaged with all the animal characters and wanted to talk about them and even act out some of the exciting bits.

When the exterminators fill the rat hole with poisonous gas, eight of the ten rats manage to escape, while the remaining two die in the hole. The second complaint is that I'm not super happy that we don't know what happened to Justin the Rat either. It is descriptive enough that you can easily picture where everything is happening without being overly descriptive. It might be because of Don Bluth's genius; but I also didn't like the illustrations in the book (all mice and rats look exactly the same) and I didn't think the author did such a great job imagining how a rat would think and act in this particular situation. A group of rats, led by one named Jenner, rejected this plan and left the nest at some point before Frisby's arrival.

Frisby, a recently widowed mouse, lives with her four children in a cinder block, in a field belonging to a farmer named Mr. Nicodemus also tells Frisby that the rats have recently decided to abandon their lifestyle of dependence on humans, which some rats regard as theft.