When I chose Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien to read aloud to my children, I had no idea that it was a children’s novel that carries some sort of message. All I knew is that it won the 1972 Newbery Award and that I had never read it. Since one of my lifelong goals is to read all the Newbery Medalists and honor books, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone. While there is nothing inappropriate in this book for my third and first grader, I do think this might be one to revisit it during my girls’ teen years. What they did this time around was simply enjoy the story, which has a lot of heart despite any deeper messages one wrings from it.
Mrs. Frisby is a mouse with a problem: she has a sick child, and their winter home is in imminent danger of being turned under by the farmer’s plow. Timothy, her sickly one, is too weak to move, and the timing is tricky, too–springtime in their summer home would surely kill him. Through an unusual turn of events, Mrs. Frisby ends up asking the rats of Mr. Fitzgibbon’s farm for help. These are no ordinary rats, and the story within the larger story is theirs. They are rats that escaped years before from a laboratory, and they had been injected with some sort of substance that made them grow in intelligence and also increased their longevity. The rats have built their own society in tunnels under a rosebush at Mr. Fitzgibbon’s farm. These highly intelligent rats help Mrs. Frisby with her problem, and in turn, Mrs. Frisby is able to help them. The story has a bittersweet ending. O’Brien does a fantastic job of making the animals come to life, and it’s easy to see why this one was chosen as the 1972 Newbery Medalist.
Of course, as I already mentioned, there seems to be more to this story than meets the eye. O’Brien brings up several philosophical ideas that are (perhaps?) obvious to those over the age of fifteen. The one that strikes me the most is the conflict between two of the rats over their own nature–should they steal from Farmer Fitzgibbon in order to survive, or should they devise their own means of survival? The argument in favor of stealing is that rats have always stolen to survive; those against it think surely they’ve reached a higher level of development that would prevent them from stooping so low as to steal–plus, stealing, even if they looked at it more as taking Fitzgibbon’s leftovers, would make them less than self-sufficient. Obviously, these rats are very sophisticated, and their conversations about these weighty topics are erudite and articulate. My take-away from their conversations has something to do with a Nanny State and the effects of living on government handouts, but I don’t know if that was necessarily O’Brien’s intention. I was interested to learn that this novel is a high school selection in the Sonlight curriculum. I can definitely see why, but again, my girls really enjoyed the story without knowing anything about the politics behind it. This is one of those books children can enjoy now and then enjoy later (or hate, depending on the particular child’s appreciation for literary analysis 😉 ).
What is your family enjoying these days?
It’s been years since I’ve read this one so I don’t know that I realizes there were all these undertones to the story either. We may need to read this one aloud (or I might assign it to N1 this summer). : )
We are working our way through The Wizard of Oz – we were derailed by Teach Them Diligently. Still trying to get my read-aloud groove back (and getting things done at home!) : )
We read Oz ages ago, and I remember thinking it was a bit weird.
I’ve not read it either. I assumed it was a strictly children’s book and picked up a copy to read to mine at some point. But now I think I shall wait until they are at least a few years older. Sounds like a book you’ll once to enjoy once young, and then again when you are older. (Or, in my case, when I am older for the first time?)
We’re in this week! We read The Book of Dragons, by Nesbit:
http://www.readingtoknow.com/2013/05/the-book-of-dragons-by-e-nesbit.html
Not by any grand plan but more by coincidence, we’ve ended up reading a couple of Great Depression books recently. We read “R My Name is Rachel” first (well, listened to it in the car. It’s by Patricia Reilly Giff and I’ve enjoyed others by her but this was my daughters’ first exposure. It was well-written and just a good story. Then, I read aloud “Strawberry Hill” by Mary Ann Hoberman (whom we mostly knew from “Seven Silly Eaters.”). In almost all ways, this was a wonderful read-aloud. Strawberry Hill is also set in the Great Depression and has a female protagonist. It’s a sweet story about a Jewish family coping with the Depression. It has typical girl-age conflicts like moving to a new town and trying to find a best friend. It also has some anti-semitism thrown in but in an age-appropriate way. (It did lead to me having to answer questions about theological differences between Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism so that part kept me on my toes a bit.) The chapters were nice and short, which I love in a read-aloud. My only complaint was that there was a “crush” situation b/w the main character and a boy in her class. It ended up not being as big a part of the plot as I thought it would be but still more than I would have liked. (More opportunities for meaningful mother-daughter conversations though.) My girls and I enjoyed both selections. Now they are listening to all the Kit books so they should be experts on the Great Depression soon 🙂
Angie–thanks for sharing your titles! I’m usually surprised by how much my girls have learned from AG books!
A few of my children have read Mrs. Frisby. I suppose I should actually read it myself!
http://burroughstribe.com/blog/2013/05/23/whats-in-the-basket/
I wasn’t exactly sure what this book was about. Thanks for reviewing it.
I’ve got nothin’ in terms of a post this week…it ended up being an unplanned blogging break (though I am trying to get a week in review post done today).
We started to watch the movie based on this book, but it turned out to be a bit to scary for my younger kids. They can handle lots and lots of “action” and fighting…but when it comes to more “suspenseful” stories like this they can be too scary.
On Friday I went to an amazing garage sale of a friend of a friend who is nearly done homeschooling her kids, and she was selling tons of classics for 25 cents each…this was one of the books i ended up buying. I think I might have read it as a kid but I’m not sure. 🙂