MAY - SPOILERS - Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

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MAY - SPOILERS - Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

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1Morphidae
Avr 15, 2014, 8:55 pm

Yay! An easy one! Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien. I have this waiting in the wings already since I found it at the library bookstore a couple weeks ago. Fifty cents - what a bargain!

Since this is a children's book/movie that many have either read or seen, I'm not going to have a non-spoiler thread.

Have fun!

2fuzzi
Avr 16, 2014, 8:58 am

Have you read it before, Morphy?

I have, but it's been a long time, and therefore, it's overdue for a reread! :)

3imyril
Avr 16, 2014, 9:20 am

Coo, this is a blast from the past. I remember this being one of my favourite books when I was about 6(?) - although I can't remember much about it now other than it taught me the meaning of 'hypochondriac'. I wonder if I can find my old copy??

4Morphidae
Modifié : Avr 16, 2014, 9:32 am

Nope. This will be my first time. Though I have seen the movie.

5fuzzi
Avr 16, 2014, 10:33 am

>4 Morphidae: of course, the book is SO superior to the movie. :)

6Morphidae
Avr 16, 2014, 11:33 am

Heh. I'll reserved judgment. I've heard that said about some books and it was true and about other books and it was not. We'll see!

7MrsLee
Avr 16, 2014, 12:40 pm

Hooray! I've been tempted to pre-read this since it arrived in January, now I can put it by my chair to anticipate. This will be a first read for me, and I've never seen the movie, either.

8scaifea
Avr 19, 2014, 12:33 pm

*peeks head in the door*

I loved both the book and the movie, although they are a bit different...

*unpeeks*

9Morphidae
Modifié : Mai 15, 2014, 1:09 pm

I've read the first third of the book and the only difference between it and the movie is dialogue and the book is more serious. It doesn't have the humor the movie has. I want to keep reading but I have a lot to do this afternoon. I'm sure I'll finish it up this evening! And now, of course, I want to see the movie again.

Mine is illustrated by Zena Bernstein. They add charm to the book.

10jjwilson61
Mai 15, 2014, 1:37 pm

The movie adds mysticism which is totally lacking from the book. I liked that element of the movie but they never explained how the Nicodemus got the mystic gemstone in the first place.

The other thing I noticed was that the character of Jenner who was the major protagonist in the movie is handled completely "off-camera" in the book. Without Jenner there was much less conflict and the whole story was much less dramatic.

11Morphidae
Modifié : Mai 15, 2014, 2:46 pm

Ah, well, I'm not at that point yet. Mrs. Frisby has just gotten to the door to the rat's place.

12Sakerfalcon
Mai 16, 2014, 9:16 am

I just bought the book yesterday and am not sure when I will fit it in, but I certainly shall try and read it before the end of the month. I think i got the same edition as Morphy, with Bernstein's illustrations.

13MrsLee
Mai 16, 2014, 11:32 am

Oh, I bought this book to read with you, so I'll pull it off the TBR shelf and put it by my chair.

14imyril
Mai 16, 2014, 11:40 am

I'm hoping to finish my current tome tomorrow so I can slip in Mrs Frisby before we go away on Monday night. Wishful thinking? We'll see. If not, it's very light to pack!

15imyril
Mai 18, 2014, 4:25 pm

I've started Mrs Frisby and I must say I'm charmed. For a start, I love that she's Mrs Frisby (the old-school politeness of not using her given name, which I can't remember whether we ever learn), and her bravery and resourcefulness are on show from the start. I'm enjoying the unfurling of the plot as she moves from mini-adventure to mini-adventure - I've just met the rats, which is where I'll leave her tonight.

I do find though that there's a slight mismatch between her conscious thoughts, which are mouse-like (she looks at bird intelligence from the perspective of a creature of a smaller brain; it takes her a while to recognise a book), and the unconscious observations and similes that pepper the prose - I'm fairly sure Mrs Frisby wouldn't consider a branch to be as big as a pavement (she lives on a farm), or look down on the farm and compare it to a postcard, for example.

I don't recall the film at all, but my Mum assures me it made me very angry as a child (I would have been very young when it came out, and utterly unforgiving of studios' habit of changing things to make them work on screen).

16imyril
Mai 25, 2014, 8:51 am

I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting Mrs Frisby. I love that it is two relatively simple stories interwoven: her quest (a sequence of mini adventures, on a mousey scale) to save her family from spring ploughing, and the rats' largely historical adventures from rubbish dump to lab to freedom and an unexplored future. I didn't recognize as a child that this was setting up a sequel, so I never sought it out. I might do now.

I like the peripheral but fearsome shrew next door, and even young Izzy, who is a bit love struck teen here, but I hope goes onto greater things in later novels. It's a shame the young Frisbys get so little page time - again, I assume they (altho I suspect only Martin and Timothy) step into the spotlight later.

It does make me want to revisit Farthing Wood and Watership Down!

17MrsLee
Mai 26, 2014, 12:26 pm

I enjoyed this book to the end, although, my mind did drift a bit when the rats went on and on about their Plan, and their history of building the present cave. The ending though. I thought it was wonderfully done. That we were not exactly told who had died, I thought it masterful. The author may have done it so his sequel would be more compelling, but I won't read the sequel. I like it just the way it is. Mysterious.

18Sakerfalcon
Mai 28, 2014, 7:44 am

>17 MrsLee: This struck me too - very unusual for a children's book to leave that sort of thing unresolved, even if it was in set-up for a sequel.

I thought this was a lovely little book, and I'm not sure why I didn't read it as a child. I liked that the animals were not anthropomorphised - they still behaved like animals not as humans with fur. Jeremy the crow was adorable with his fatal weakness for shiny things! Mrs Frisby is a lovely heroine and I like that she ends up able to help the rats despite their superior knowledge and resources.

Having looked at the series list on LT, it seems that the sequels are written by another author. Does anyone know whether they were planned by O'Brien or completely original to the author? Has anyone read them?

19Morphidae
Modifié : Mai 28, 2014, 8:27 am

The sequel's author is his daughter. I don't believe they were planned by O'Brien. The first was written thirteen years after his death. O'Brien purposefully left Justin's fate uncertain. His daughter, however, told what happened.

20imyril
Mai 28, 2014, 8:22 am

>19 Morphidae: aha, that explains why they passed me by as a child. In that case, I don't think I'll hunt them out. Thanks!

21MrsLee
Mai 28, 2014, 11:53 am

I thought the portrayal of Mrs. Frisby as a mother was lovely. She hadn't been enhanced by drugs, but her love for her children, while not necessarily making her smarter, certainly made her brave, or if not brave, gave her the impetus to do the needed thing.

I liked the whole description of the meeting with the owl, too. I was prepared to hate it, considering how unnatural it would be, but it was written in such a way that it was very frightening for Mrs. Frisby, and rightly so.