2024-02-11: This may be Pratchett's greatest work. It's an entertaining story that also manages to teach some things that people really, desperately, need to understand if humanity is going to survive. ( )

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is a Discworld retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. It is the 28th book in the series, the first aimed at a YA audience, and can easily be read as stand alone.

As the story starts we are immediately introduced to Maurice (a talking tom cat), a group of talking rats (who have taken names from canned goods), and a stupid looking kid (named Keith, not that they've ever asked) traveling by coach to the town of Bad Blintz. Maurice is planning how to scam the town by using the old rat piper routine by first staging a rat invasion and then offering the solution as the kid poses as a piper to lead the rats away for a small fee. This isn't sitting well with the rats as it seems immoral and everyone agrees it will be the last time they perform this stunt. As the group moves into town to get started, they discover all is not as it seems and things turn deadly as Maurice and the Clan uncover the town's dark secret.

Terry Pratchett is a master at working deeper themes into what seems like it would be a simple story. It's also pretty dark for one aimed at kids, showing how nasty humanity can be at times. I enjoyed all of the characters immensely and found the names the rats had chosen for themselves (such as Dangerous Beans and Hamnpork) to be fun and quirky. Even Malicia grew on me with her "Sisters Grim" view of the world and thinking of everything as a story. It's a pretty profound insight into the human. She makes a good point: "If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story." ( )

DNF @ Page 45.

Jon wanted this book because he loves cats and there's a cat on the cover. Which is pretty misleading because the story isn't really about the cat, it's about rats - The cat is barely there! (At least up until page 45)

Maurice is a talking cat and has come upon a group of intelligent talking rats. He has vowed not to eat any rat that can talk. They end up working together as they move to a town with the intent of… ok, I’m not exactly sure what their end goal was – money? They were conning people, or planning to. There are two kids who discover them and decide to help when they discover the local rat-catchers were not only catching rats, but behind other bad things, as well.

This was ok. It’s a terrible summary, but there it is. Not as humourous as I remember of the other (few) books I’ve read by Pratchett. I hate footnotes, though, and even more so in fiction, but Pratchett uses them. Luckily, there were not many in this book. ( )

I have now read this book to my class 11 times. That should tell you what I think about it. ( )