#mrs. frisby and the rats of nimh

[heepthecheep]

It bothers me when people compare Tailchaser's song and Warriors and act like they're so similar when they're really not?

To me Tailchaser's Song is most similar to Watership Down, being a single novel of epic proportions, with a large focus on the fictional language/mythology, large overall battle that must be won that's not initially present at the beginning of the story but that the plot builds up to through other conflicts.

To me, Warriors is most similar to series like Wings of Fire (arc structure, novellas, etc), Redwall (Length), Guardians of Ga'Hoole (Conflict and age) and Silverwing (how our characters actually perceive the world). Actually, I think it's most similar to the various Ginga manga than anything else.

While Felidae is known for it's graphic violence, it's also not comparable really, besides featuring cats and a cat-cult. These cats are fully aware of how humans work, and at the same time, they often act more cat-like.

While writing this up, I realized that there's a distinct subgenre within Xenofiction that I'm going to refer to as "dog stories". A "dog story" is told from the perspective of a dog, but it's actually about the people in the dog's life rather than the dog itself. In essence, the story could be told from the perspective of a sentient air fryer and very little would change. Popular examples would be "A dog's purpose" and "The art of racing in the rain" amongst others. Of course, not all stories about dogs are "dog stories" but many of them are.

Also, I'm realizing that mice are super popular for Xenofiction, except most just make them tiny humans living parallel to humanity. This isn't a bad thing as many of them are pretty good stories (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM, The Tale of Despereaux , The Rescuers, Etc), while birds outside of owls are very very underrepresented (except for Swordbird, which as a kid I thought sucked. Which is funny because I was and still am into Warriors) ...Unless you count Raptor Red?

[dani-luminae]

The book vs. movie of The Secret of NIMH is so flipping funny.

The book: "There's these rats that escaped from a laboratory. They're very smart and they can help Mrs. Frisby move her house and save her family from the plow. There's this one rebel group led by Jenner, but they disappeared before the current events and don't matter."

The movie: "Nicodemus is a straight-up sorcerer. Jenner is actively plotting an assassination attempt on him. Mrs. Brisby literally saves her own house with a magical amulet. None of this is explained."

[deep-spacediver577]

Illustrations by Zena Bernstein

[isitfurbait]

Is the rats of nimh furbait

I've already reviewed Mrs. Frisby as a character, and frankly, it goes without saying that Don Bluth made that fur bait. I may have been to idolizing of Don Bluth's designs in the first place, but that doesn't cover the original story by Robert C. O'Brien. For that, I would say that it is perfect in its inspiration of art, world building, and story. One could argue against its furbait qualities, being that they are animals in a world of humans, which poses some strong questions. However, the anthropomorphism of each protagonist animal counters that, with the fact that our perspective is with Mrs. Frisby, rather than the people in the world around her using rodents for medical experiments in order to build empathy around the characters who are used for their rapid intelligence.

[lakecountylibrary]

Read -> Reading -> To-Read

Read what the librarian is reading! Here's what's been on LCPL librarian Kate's shelf lately.

Just Read: A Long Stretch of Bad Days by Mindy McGinnis

This YA thriller/mystery was enthralling. I finished the audiobook in one day. I loved the friendship between Lydia and Bristal and I was surprised by the plot twist at the very end. I recommend this book to readers who liked Sadie by Courtney Summers.

Now Reading: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien

This book was recommended by my husband and I'm really enjoying it so far! I'm hoping for the best for Mrs. Frisby and her children. The animals in the book are so brave and intelligent. I can't wait to see where this story goes.

To-Read: The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland

I loved Krystal Sutherland's book House of Hollow, so I've been wanting to read this book since it was published earlier this year. I'm hoping I like it as much as her last book.

See more of Kate's recs

[slowpoke272]

“mrs. frisby and the rats of NIMH” by robert c. o’brien

finished: july 11, 2023

this is a childhood throwback for me, though i had only ever seen the movie previously. although it’s a short children’s novel, due to its subject matter it definitely does not feel watered down or sugarcoated. as a kid, i loved seeing the animals interact with one another and the perspective you get from seeing a field mouse provide for her family. the don bluth film was one of my core movies in rotation, i remember loving the music and jeremy the crow especially.

as an adult reading the novel for the first time, i appreciate how closely the movie follows the story, although the main difference in the story i do strongly prefer the book; i don’t think this story needs a fantasy element and i think around that part in the movie is where it would kind of lose my interest. up until that point, the story seems pretty realistic, but i guess there existed a need for some kind of theatrics. i don’t hate the movie’s ending, but i definitely appreciate the original work much more. i also deeply appreciate the topics handled in this short novel, which include some of humanity’s blindspots and shortcomings. i also like that the original novel doesn’t have jenner in it actively ever, and he’s “off screen” for the action but still a pivotal role. again, i know it’s hollywood or whatever, but the jenner vs. justin and nicodemus sabotaging feels like projecting human behavior. these rats were given a gift of intelligence, but we’re supposed to believe that jenner’s main focus in life post-NIMH is revenge? humans absolutely, but i think the point of the novel is to show that different animals and species move differently. the only thing i kind of preferred the movie over was jeremy having a bigger, more comedic role, but for the purpose of remaining realistic and believable, i understand why jeremy has his part in the beginning and then that’s just sort of it with him.

i don’t think a novel like this could be published today catered to a young audience, but i think it introduced some of humanity’s pitfalls without being too grim. this is just how the animals have come to deal with humans and vice versa. the novel isn’t saying we need to do anything specific about it or feel a certain way, it just is our natural world. i think the blatant realness presented in this book allows for the reader to gain empathy for pretty much every character in the novel. we aren’t made to hate the farmer, for instance, but we are to understand from the rodents’ perspective, they’re just trying to survive and predict the farmer’s next steps.

it’s a cute story that isn’t corny or afraid to introduce darker themes like death to children without being gratuitously graphic or obscene. i enjoyed the different perspective and think this is entirely the point of storytelling, to present others’ perspectives fully fleshed out. it has always made me think twice about considering all rodents vermin.

fun random fact about the 1982 don bluth film: the person who voiced timothy brisby (albeit a small role for this story) later came out as transgender and has successfully transitioned. way to go, ina fried!

rating: 7/10 really enjoyed but wouldn't necessarily recommend

[capesandshapes]

thinking of the rats of nimh like what was that and why do the rats still haunt me

[newberyandchai]

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1972)

I was unfamiliar with this book, but not the gist of the story (although I’d often wondered what “nim” was when seeing the title on the shelf of the elementary school library at a very early age). I remember watching the movie version at some point in my childhood — maybe over several rainy days during recess? — and remembered it to be a much more fantastical, magical tale than what the text told.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH was less action-packed and more straightforward than the movie, but because of that, I ended up liking it all the more. They’re almost entirely different stories (even Mrs. Frisby underwent a name change to avoid copyright infringement with a certain flying disc sport, and the movie is called The Secret of NIMH instead), but I’m okay with that because of just how much was changed. I see why they made certain creative decisions for the movie, and the animation is quite good for the early 80s.

(P.S. The full movie is available online for free.)

The movie feels almost like an alternate universe fanfic — or AU, for us fanfiction fiends — in a unique reimagining of the plot, but that doesn’t mean the source material is boring by any means. The next three paragraphs are a brief summary of the entire thing (which certainly includes spoilers, so… close your eyes):

Mrs. Frisby is a widowed mouse with three children who lives inside a cinderblock on a farm. The family usually moves to their winter home before the harvest begins, but Mrs. Frisby’s youngest son gets sick and can’t be moved in time. With the help of a crow, she visits an old owl to ask for help in what she should do. She is surprised to find out that the owl used to know her late husband, and he tells her to visit the rat colony that lives near the farm. The plan is to ask the rats to move her house out of the path of the farming equipment that will be coming through the area in just a few days’ time.

Mrs. Frisby goes to see them and learns about the story of the rats from their leader, a very old rat named Nicodemus. An original small group of rodents had been experimented on at the National Institute of Mental Health many years ago, and both rats and mice had received doses of a drug that increased their intelligence, strength, and lifespan. The group of rats and mice — which included Mrs. Frisby’s late husband, Jonathan — ended up using their new thinking skills to plan an escape. The rat colony, which has expanded and now contains multiple generations after the escape, is now literate and scientifically advanced.

Mrs. Frisby learns that the rats have been working on a plan to grow their own food and generate their own electricity so they no longer have to scavenge and steal from humans. They move her house out of the path of the plow through some simple engineering, but humans from NIMH are alerted to the presence of the super-intelligent rats after a grisly incident involving one dissenting rat and his followers trying to steal a motor from a local shop. The colony then has to stage an evacuation of their home when some exterminators come, but they must simultaneously pretend to be unintelligent rats and make their escape look chaotic and unplanned (as it would with normal rats) to mislead the humans. Some main characters perish, but the colony survives and ultimately leaves the area to rebuild while Mrs. Frisby goes back to a normal life with her family.

So: In the movie, it’s implied the rats got some kind of magical powers during their time at NIMH, and Nicodemus is depicted as a wizard figure with glowing eyes. There’s a magical amulet that glows red when worn by someone “with a courageous heart,” and the dissenting rat who breaks away from the main group (Jenner) is much more of an antagonist who is actively seeking to wrest control of the colony from Nicodemus. (There’s also some murdering, a sword fight or two, and some interesting medieval-style clothing choices for the rodents.) The climax of the book is changed from the extermination to the house-moving scene, in which the cinderblock starts sinking into the mud as they try to move it, but Mrs. Frisby uses the amulet as an Infinity Gauntlet (kind of) and moves it to safety with the Force (more or less).

Surprisingly, I still enjoyed the less-dramatic version of events in the book. It posed some thoughtful questions about being an intelligent being in a world that sees you only as a pest or a lab experiment, and Mrs. Frisby was almost a Frodo-like character in that she was only associated with the larger conflict secondhand; she really only wanted the rats’ help to move her house, just as Frodo ultimately only wanted to return to the Shire but had no choice but to be the bearer of the Ring. They were both swept up and involved in in the larger plots of their respective books (somewhat unwillingly, at least in Frodo's case).

Despite this, Mrs. Frisby does make the heroic choice on her own to volunteer to drug the farm cat, Dragon, so the rats are able to move her house without any threat of danger — even after finding out her husband had died trying to complete the same task. She's only a passive observer of the rats' plan to avoid the exterminators and watches everything unfold from a tree branch ("Mrs. Frisby could not bear to watch; and yet, even more, she could not bear to not watch"), even though she could do nothing to help.

Another difference is that the book spends much more time explaining the origin of the rats and their time at NIMH, including how they were taught by the researchers, how they formulated their escape plan, and why they started working toward the goal of building a self-sufficient colony — which held my interest from beginning to end. One passage sticks out in my mind: While the rats and mice are moving through the building's airducts during their escape, the air kicks on and all but two of the mice, who weigh much less than the rats, are blown back and left to wander the endless maze of ductwork seemingly forever:

We were approaching the lighted square of the opening when the roar began. The blast of air came like a sudden whistling gale; it took my breath and flattened my ears against my head … when I opened my eyes again I saw one of the mice sliding past me, clawing uselessly with his small nails at the smooth metal beneath him. Another followed him, and still another, as one by one they were blown backward into the dark maze of tunnels we had just left. … But the rest were lost, six in all. They were simply too light; they blew away like dead leaves, and we never saw them again.

Chilling.

Lest this become more of a movie review/comparison than book, let’s just say I liked it a lot and think anyone would enjoy it — 8/10, certified Recommendable.

[cultfaction]

Preview: The Secret of Nimh (Bluray)

In 1979, legendary animator Don Bluth made the decision to leave Walt Disney Productions and establish his own animation studio with several former Disney employees. The newly established Don Bluth Productions first made a short – Banjo the Woodpile Cat – and then its first feature: The Secret of NIMH, adapted from Robert C. O’Brien’s popular children’s book Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The…

[theshehulkproject]

Every once in a while the books subreddit makes me laugh out loud.

[siravalon]

Funny mouse book/movie

[l-ultimo-squalo]

The Secret of NIMH (1982) dir. Don Bluth

[titleknown]

I gotta say, given the involvement of the National Institute of Mental Health, the Secret of NIMH universe has the potential for the funniest fucking government agency scandal ever.

"You made the rats sapient and then you tried to commit genocide on them?!"

[godzilla-reads]

The trifecta of perfect mouse stories 🔺

Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Redwall by Brian Jacques

[book--brackets]