The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

Terry Pratchett The Discworld series 28th novel – 6th individual story
Outline
Characters	Maurice, Darktan, Dangerous Beans, Peaches, Malicia (The Mayors Daughter), Hamnpork, Sardines, Spider - a Rat King, Death of Rats, the Piper
Locations	Überwald: Bad Blintz
Motifs	Fantasy, Beatrix Potter, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, The Secret of NIMH, Grimm's Fairy Tales
Publication details
Date of release	2001
Original publisher	Doubleday
Hardback ISBN	ISBN 0-385-60123-9
Paperback ISBN	ISBN 0-552-54693-3
Other details
Awards	Winner of the 2001 Carnegie Medal.
Other notes	The first Discworld book to be aimed at the younger market.

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is the 28th novel in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, published in 2001. It was the first Discworld book to be aimed at the younger market; this was followed by The Wee Free Men in 2003. This book is not the first time that Maurice and his Educated Rodents are mentioned: they are referenced as early as Reaper Man, which was published in 1991.

The novel won the Carnegie Medal in 2001, providing Pratchett with his first major award. The leader of the judges, Karen Usher, declared that the choice was a unanimous one: "This is an outstanding work of literary excellence - a brilliant twist on the tale of the Pied Piper that is funny and irreverent, but also dark and subversive."^[1]

Plot summary

The Amazing Maurice is a sentient cat who leads his 'Educated Rodents', a group of sentient rats, as they go from town to town posing as a plague so that their accomplice, a teenage human piper named Keith, can "lure them all away" from the town, after which they share the money the piper receives. The rats had gained intelligence from eating the waste from the rubbish tip behind Unseen University; Maurice gained it after eating one of the rats, before he was capable of realizing that they were no longer normal rats.

The group is not completely happy; the leader of the rats, Hamnpork, despises Maurice, while Dangerous Beans (they chose names based on the labels they could read before they could comprehend), a near-blind albino rat who guides them like a guru, wants to start a rat civilization - both he and Peaches, the group's scribe, find their trickery unethical. The rats are seeking the ideal of humans and rats living together, following the example of their sacred book Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure. They agree to do one last job, in the town of Bad Blintz, in Überwald.

The rats set about planning their offensive, led by Darktan, their general, while Maurice and Keith look around. They are surprised to find that while the buildings are expensively built, the people have little food, and rats are hunted far more viciously than anywhere else. Maurice and Keith meet Malicia, the mayor's daughter, who is a story teller. She soon discovers that Maurice can talk, and meets Sardines, a tap-dancing rat who is the most daring of the group. While talking to her, Maurice reveals that the rat catchers have been passing off bootlaces as rat tails.

As they set off to look in the rat-catchers' house, the rats discover many rat tunnels, which are empty, save for traps and poison. The two groups meet in the rat catchers' den, where they have been storing the food the rats are thought to have eaten, and find cages where the rats are being bred, for coursing.

The rat catchers return, and lock Keith and Malicia away, and take Hamnpork to be coursed. Maurice hides, and feels a voice trying to enter his mind. The rats feel it, and it returns many of them to being simple rats - to the dismay of Dangerous Beans. Darktan leads a group to rescue Hamnpork, while Peaches and Dangerous Beans free Keith and Malicia. Malicia lets slip that Mr Bunnsy Has an Adventure is a fictional children's book, and Dangerous Beans and Peaches leave in despair.

Darktan's group is successful in rescuing a severely injured Hamnpork, though Darktan himself, the head of the Trap Disposal Squad, finds himself in a trap. After a near-death experience, he assumes leadership, and sets out after Dangerous Beans. Maurice gives in to his conscience and is also seeking them, but the voice drowns out his thoughts. Malicia and Keith, after gaining freedom, trick the rat catchers into revealing their secret. The rat catchers have created a powerful rat king named Spider – eight rats, tied together at the tail, who make a single mind with power over others.

Spider is interested in Dangerous Beans; other rats he can control, but Dangerous Beans has a mind similar to his: one that thinks for others. Dangerous Beans refuses Spider's offer of jointly ruling, as Spider wants to wage war on humans. Spider tries to destroy Dangerous Beans' mind; this is felt by his army of rats and Maurice. Dangerous Beans is able to resist, but Maurice reverts to being a cat, and the cat instinct tells him to pounce...

Darktan's army, who have been fighting Spider's rats, find Peaches in Spider's lair, which is on fire. Maurice emerges from the fire carrying the body of Dangerous Beans. When he is safely out, he collapses and dies. In ghostly form, he sees the Death of Rats coming for Dangerous Beans. He attacks the Death of Rats to save Dangerous Beans, but is picked up by Death, with whom he strikes a deal, exchanging two of his remaining lives so that Death will leave Dangerous Beans.

Though Spider is defeated, there is still a problem remaining: the rat piper is due to arrive the next day. The rats set about rounding up 'keekees', non-intelligent rats. When the piper arrives, Keith challenges him to a duel. His pipe was broken by the rat catchers, so Keith uses a borrowed trombone in the duel. When the piper starts to play his magical pipe, the rats avoid being charmed, & the keekees can't respond, being locked in their cages.

The piper calls Keith aside, and tells him the tricks of the trade: the pipe contains a hidden slide position for a trick note that drives rats away, the stories are made up so people will be scared into paying. Keith and the piper then lead the keekees out of town – Keith wants to maintain the story of the piper, and the rats want a convenient way to set the keekees free.

Once that has been done, the rats emerge, offering to tell the humans where to find the stolen food and money, in return for living peacefully with them. Maurice of course negotiates on their behalf with the humans. Keith stays on as the town's piper, and the town becomes a tourist attraction & everybody remarks on how 'clean' the place is.

Ideas and themes

The novel presents a new take on the classic fairy tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin.^[1]

All the rats' names derive from the words they have seen written on tins before they knew what the words meant, and they have called themselves whatever they thought sounded good. Pratchett puns on this, such as the doubting rat, who was called 'Tomato' (as in Doubting Thomas).

Adaptations

• BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 90-minute dramatisation in 2003, which was repeated on BBC 7 on June 2, 2007 and April 27, 2008. The character of Dangerous Beans was voiced by David Tennant. Darktan's voice was a spoof version of Sean Connery's Scottish burr. The narrator in the adaptation was Maurice himself, describing to Dangerous Beans how they arrived at the perilous situation near the end of the plot. Quotes from "Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure", which appear as chapter heads in the book, was read by Rebecca Norfolk aged 8 who played 'Child reader' in the BBC Radio 4 production. To mark the occasion of Terry Pratchett's knighthood, it was broadcast on BBC 7 again, along with other dramatizations of his work, in February 2009.

See also

Novels portal

• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
• Rat king (folklore)

External links

• Terry Pratchett Books

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Ezard, John (July 13, 2002). "Guardian - 'Pied Piper' brings belated literary reward". The Guardian (London). http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4460677-103690,00.html. Retrieved May 25, 2010. 

Reading order guide
Preceded by The Last Hero	28th Discworld Novel	Succeeded by Night Watch
Preceded by The Truth	6th Individual Story Published in 2001	Succeeded by Monstrous Regiment
Awards
Preceded by The Other Side of Truth by Beverley Naidoo	Carnegie Medal Winner 2001	Succeeded by Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech