I am sure there are many big, and important books about the nature of consciousness. I am sure they are full of big, and important ideas. And this is a little book. About rats, of all the things. And except for the swearing- in rat and cat languages- appropriate for kids.

What is it that makes us rat- or human? What happens when you die? What is there in the darkness? And what about the darkness behind your eyes?

What is courage? The great speeches, are they about heroes, or about leaders beguiling their men- or rats- to death? What is courage? Where do you find heroes? What is fear? Why do we fear the night?

What is the meaning of it all? Is there any meaning to it all?

And, what are stories? Can they ever be real? What does it take, to make them real?

And, where do you ask these questions?
Phillip Pullman, in an interview I once heard, said that grown-up books are about issues. My girlfriend left me, now what do I do? They can not ask the real questions. The children's books, on the other hand, do ask the real questions. Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my purpose in life?
And it's true. Growing-up is about finding the answers to these questions. And if you are me, you grow up and realize that The answer is 42, and all these questions are not the really interesting questions, the really interesting questions are, say, how do aeroplanes fly? Why are leaves green? Does smoking cause cancer? Do COX2 inhibitors cause MI? The interesting questions are the ones which have interesting answers. Or answers worth finding out. Or something. I am not sure. As far as I am concerned, the answer to is there a soul, is- who cares.

But all the other questions, the ones which don't have real, testable answers, there is a time and place to face them. And the time is at the begining, of life, as well as civilization.

So we have this story about rats, who suddenly find that they can think, and then try to come to terms with it, their newfound status as people. You get lots of cool characters, the ineffectual leader, who gets replaced by the great, inspiring one, the thinker, the unscruplous con-cat with a heart of gold, the girl who believes in stories, and awesome women. Really, Pratchett is the only writer whose female characters are always awesome. They always sound real, are sensible and practical, like real women, and smart, brave, and overall amazing.
So are his heroes. Actually, I think I said this before, but every Pratchett character is very good at what they do. And they are believable. Heck, even his prophets are believable.

He understands religion. He understands racism, bigorty, humanity. He understands dreams, fear, courage. And I have a sneaking suspicion that he understands love. He might be telling stories and building narrative tension, but mostly he talks about reality, and about what things really are, and not what they ought to be for his story to work.

'And, you know, I don't think there're any wonderful islands in the distance for people like us. Not for us.' He sighed. 'If there's a wonderful island anywhere, it's here.

He understands dreams, and stories, and how they change reality and get changed by them.

I left it incomplete, and now it is too late to complete it... ( )

Wee Free 1.

Reviewed by Candace Cunard for TeensReadToo.com

I have always been told that, as a fan of fantasy and humor, I needed to read Terry Pratchett. And after reading THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS, I now understand what everyone was talking about. Pratchett's style is simultaneously witty, entertaining, and incisive; he succeeds in this children's book in saying more about society than most adult books ever manage, and he does so while making you laugh out loud.

Set in an obscure corner of Discworld, the fantasy world in which Pratchett has written numerous other books for adults, a cat named Maurice discovers suddenly the ability to talk--and not just to talk, but to think and to reason. Maurice believes himself to be the only animal afflicted with this talent, until he discovers a group of rats living in the city dump who have also miraculously achieved the ability of speech and thought. As Maurice is emphatic about his promise to never eat anything that can talk, he and the talking rats get along rather well. Soon, along with the help of an orphan boy named Keith who was raised by a musician's guild, Maurice sets upon a scheme to make some easy money, and the rats go along in their belief that they may someday find a place where they will be free to live as talking rats without the fear of being hunted by humans.

Maurice's plan is simple. If the rats will go and infest a town, wreaking havoc for the space of a few days, the town leaders will be sure to call a rat piper to remove the rats from the town. Then it's Keith's job to show up, pipe the rats away, and receive a generous fee for his troubles, one that the rats and Maurice will share. Keith, Maurice, and the rats go like this from town to town...until they reach the town of Bad Blintz, and everything stops working as planned.

The story is populated by humorous characters that you can't help but take seriously. Maurice's sly cunning is undermined by the fact that he meticulously questions any rat he comes across before eating it, in order to keep up his first promise to the talking rats. The rats themselves are amusing individuals, self-named after the first things they could read in that city dump where they originated, so that the story is populated by creatures who go by Hamnpork, Darktan, Sardines, and Dangerous Beans. But under these hilarious names, they are at heart a people trying to figure out their own origins and explain the things they don't yet understand about their sudden ability to speak, and what that means for their future.

I would recommend this book to anyone who's not afraid to laugh, and anyone who's not afraid to think hard about the ramifications of being a person--or rat, or cat--capable of speech, thought, and reason. ( )

Pratchett's new take on the Pied Piper of Hamelin; amusing in a gentle way ( )

Based upon the pied piper tale, we meet a band of rats led by a cat. By chance, they have gained human intelligence by eating the garbage dumped outside the Unseen University. They make their way by tricking Discworld's human inhabitants. With the help of a gentle lad named Keith, this gang infests towns with sudden plagues of rats that the boy is prepared to rescue, masquerading as a pied piper. ( )