Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

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I approached this with the usual trepidation you get when going back to a childhood favourite after nearly four decades away. Connolly noted the book for Conly's "gradations of moral understanding and culpability" while dealing with "such problematic issues as the roles of science and technology, identity, idealism, family life, forms of community and means of survival". Here I take a second look at a previously enjoyed novel and give me crew me second reflections, as it were, upon visitin' it again .

I loved getting more details about the time Jonathan and the rats spent at NIMH, and I will continue to read the other accounts in the series. We also have the occasional misfortune of horse-flies in the summertime and the rare autumn visit of a mouse who makes it past the notice of our savage (and somehow still fabulous) cat. Will the rats of NIMH - a group of highly intelligent laboratory rats - help her find a solution to her dilemma?Conly, Jane Leslie 1947-" The Cambridge Guide to Children's Books in English, edited by Victor Watson, Cambridge University Press, 1st edition, 2001.

For me the whole story is entertaining whilst being an insight into an aspect of life that we, as humans, seem to have forgotten. 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.Frisby, a housewife mouse with no special enhancements from NIMH of her own, shows amazing courage, strength, and composure. While there he studied piano at Eastman School of Music, and at one time considered being a musician. O'Brien (1918-1973) was, in private life, Robert Leslie Conly, senior assistant editor of National Geographic Magazine where he worked for over twenty years.

I mean rats and a few mice with special intellectual properties that want to build their own successful community. If you like an intelligently written children’s book that provides some food for thought, you could do a lot worse. He also had a home in Morgan County, West Virginia, after 1965, a place he loved and visited as often as he could. 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.I've read reviews about what the author's intention was, pointing to the various themes - from science playing with nature to self-determination to morality - present in the story.

And there's an interesting snippet at the back as to how the seeds of the story were planted in the author's mind. In a paper titled "The Critical Reader in Children's Metafiction", literary scholar Joe Sanders wrote that the book's emphasis on the rats' abilities to read mirrors the "growing reading abilities of the novel's own target audience". Constance Vidor commented that "Conly's books continue her father' emphasis on the theme of social responsibility while weaving in new characters with more personal problems".Calhoun on mouse and rat population dynamics at the National Institute of Mental Health from the 1940s to the 1960s. Their increased intelligence and strength allowed them to escape from NIMH and migrate to their present location on the farm. One was an introduction to linguistics class, which I'll probably mention when I review The Bird Way. A culture of fear began to grow surrounding unethical medical and scientific practices, which are heavily reflected in the book.