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Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a children's book by Robert C. O'Brien, illustrated by Zena Bernstein published in 1971 with many subsequent reprintings. It won the 1972 Newbery Medal.
Plot
The novel relates the plight of a widowed field mouse, Mrs. Frisby, whose family must trek every year to a summer home to escape the destruction of their winter home by plowing. An unexpected thaw prompts an early move, but their plans are stymied by the deathly illness of her son Timothy, and Mrs. Frisby must venture out for assistance.
She heads to the house of a friend, Mr. Ages, and obtains medicine, and on the return journey, she saves the life of a crow from Dragon, the farmer's cat, and she is advised by the crow, Jeremy, to seek advice from a wise old owl who dwells in the forest.
She accepts a ride from Jeremy and sets out to see the owl in his tree. He has no advice to give her—until hearing her last name. He then suggests she seek help from a nest of rats which lives nearby under a rose bush.
She discovers that the nest is a community of long-lived, super-intelligent rats, who have built a literate and mechanized society. She learns of their history from their leader, Nicodemus, who relates their capture, experimentation at a (fictitious) laboratory at NIMH, where they are given human-level intelligence (among other things, they are able to read, write, and operate complicated machines), their escape from NIMH, and finally their migration to their present state. She learns, too, that her husband had been a companion of the rats, and out of respect for him, Nicodemus agrees to help the Frisby family.
The rats are also preparing to abandon their lifestyle of theft from humans for a new, independent farming colony in a place called Thorn Valley. When a group of rebel rats is recovered by the NIMH scientists, however, all plans are threatened. Mrs. Frisby is captured, and NIMH prepares to re-capture its escaped rats and destroy the colony on Fitzgibbons' farm.
Themes
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH contains a wide variety of themes and possible interpretations which make it popular for teaching to elementary school children. Mrs. Frisby's defeat of her instinctive fears of natural predators, the limitlessness of parental love, the power of the maternal bond, the rats' desire for self-determination as opposed to dependency, and the nature of intelligence itself are weighed. The rats of NIMH are interpreted by some as justifying scientific experimentation on animals, and by others as condemning of it.
Related works
O'Brien's daughter, Jane Leslie Conly, wrote two other novels based on the rats of NIMH. Racso and the Rats of NIMH tells the story of a city rat who runs away to join the new colony, befriending Timothy Frisby and heroically saving the colony from a flood along the way. In R.T., Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH, the rats rescue two lost human children who in turn help to save the colony before winter.
In 1982, the animated film The Secret of NIMH was released. Directed by Don Bluth, it was relatively faithful to the book, although it adds a mystical element totally absent from the novel, and one character is killed in a swordfight for dramatic effect. Additionally, the title character's name was changed to Brisby to avoid potential trademark objections from the makers of the frisbee.
The computer game Lemmings includes an homage to the rats of NIMH, called The secret of LEMH.
External links
Newbery Medal winners (book) | 1971 books | Children's books | Fictional mice and rats
"Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH"