Product Description

Imagine a million clever rats. Rats that don't run. Rats that fight...Maurice, a scruffy tomcat with an eye for the main chance, has the perfect fiddle going. He has a stupid-looking kid for a piper, and he has his very own plague of rats - rats who are strangely educated, so Maurice can no longer think of them as 'lunch'. And everyone knows the stories about rats and pipers - and is giving him lots of money...Until they try the trick in the far-flung town of Bad Blintz, and the nice little con suddenly goes down the drain. Someone there is playing a different tune. A dark, shadowy tune. Something very, very bad is waiting in the cellars. The rats must learn a new word. Evil. It's not a game any more. It's definitely a rat-eat-rat world down there. In fact, that might only be the start...Bestselling novelist Terry Pratchett leads readers from tale to tail in a darkly imaginative and fiendishly entertaining story, the first for younger readers set in the Discworld universe, the setting of his phenomenally successful fantasy novels.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #126300 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Terry Pratchett returns to children's stories and to his infamous Discworld with Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, a clever spin on the Pied Piper fairytale with a lavish sprinkling of the Practchett magic.

Maurice is a talking cat who leads a band of rather special rats from town to town to fake invasions of vermin. Keith, in cahoots with Maurice, turns up with his flute and leads the rats out of town--a hefty reward in tow. It's a scam that works perfectly... until they arrive in the town of Bad Blintz and their ruse is sussed by the young girl Malicia. Maurice and his mice realise they are about to be caught in the middle of something rather bad.

This is a fresh and funny adventure story that allows Pratchett to make free use of his immense comic talents (the talking rats are easily some of his most hilarious creations). It's also full of cute little ideas: the mice take their names from cans and packets lying in rubbish dumps, so we have heroes called "Big Savings" and "Best Before".

Terry Pratchett has created a wonderful, old-fashioned tale where the subtle morals and lessons never hinder the action. Younger children may initially struggle with Mr Pratchett's unusual style, but once they get to grips with the humour, this will be a laugh-a-minute for both kids and their parents. (Ages 8 and over) --Jon Weir

From the Back Cover
Maurice, a streetwise tomcat, has the perfect money-making scam. Everyone knows the stories about rats and pipers, and Maurice has a stupid-looking kid with a pipe, and his very own plague of rats – strangely educated rats…
But in Bad Blintz, the little con suddenly goes down the drain. For someone there is playing a different tune and now the rats must learn a new word.
EVIL.
It's not a game any more. It's a rat-eat-rat world. And that might only be the start...
‘One of Terry Pratchett’s funniest creations…. It all adds up to a wonderful book – hilarious, brilliantly constructed and shot through with an edginess to balance the laughs’ SFX Magazine
‘Enticing and occasionally gory’ Observer
‘A laugh-a-minute’ Times Educational Supplement

About the Author
Terry Pratchett is one of the most popular authors writing today. He lives behind a keyboard in Wiltshire and says he 'doesn't want to get a life, because it feels as though he's trying to lead three already'. He was appointed OBE in 1998. He is the author of the phenomenally successful Discworld series and his trilogy for young readers, The Bromeliad, is scheduled to be adapted into a spectacular animated movie.

Customer Reviews

Hilarious, warming, scripted perfectly,
'The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents' has to be the funniest book i have read so far. It was hilarious from beginning to end and the ideas within the book are superb. Comedy and Fantasy rolled up into one. I could not put this book down! The names within the book of the rats are brilliant. A thoroughly enjoyable book that is not to be missed.

The best characters within the book by far have to be 'Darktan', the rat with a good instinct for traps within his own trap disposal squad and 'Sardines'; the rat who wears a home made hat and tap dances to scare humans. Hilarious. do not miss!!! I have never read such a well scripted book, the jokes are great. 'Amazing Maurice and his educated rodents'; a book i would recommend to anyone and everyone. Even those who dont like rats, after reading this book you'll be in love with Terry Pratchetts educated rats and as for 'Maurice', we all knew that there is something very sly going on in cats minds when they wrap themselves around our legs...and purr so innocently at us. A little insight into what our feline friends are REALLY thinking.

Excellent!, brilliant!, hilarious!, A thoroughly enjoyable book for all ages.
Go read it now!!!!

A Grim (Squeaker) fairy tail
This book has been aimed at those children who like the wicked witch to be shoved into the oven, rather than those who like Mr Bunnykins!

While the only regular characters that appear are The Grim Squeaker and Death (only cameo appearances), the story of Darktan, Maurice and the rest is typical Pratchett.

The Story has a rather dark sense of humour, which most kids will love, but it's this darker motiff that will enable most adult fans to enjoy this book to.

Personaly, I hope there will be a sequel, as the Rats certainly have lots of character.

Ignore the fact its aimed at children and try it, you WILL like it.

An urgent purchase
If I had voice-recognition software my hands would currently be up, high above my head. Of course, I don't. But nevertheless, metaphorically speaking my hands are up. You caught me. I am an unashamed, long-term Pratchett fan. Not the convention type, to be sure. But fan still, and for as long as I can remember.

So, to finally hold a children's book (award-winning children's book, I should say) by Pratchett, set in the margins of the Discworld, is to snap me back into my childhood with the joyous g-force of a sharp and plunging twist on a rollercoaster.

The Amazing Maurice is not a long book, and as ever it takes but the beat on an eyelid to read it through. But this is not about skimming quickly to the end, it is about the thrall of a Pratchett book, the way you sink into it from the very first page, never really looking up until you've finished the last. So: you will read it quickly, maybe in just a day, but you will find at the end of that day, that you have not dressed, eaten, nor remembered to go to work.

The plot here is pared down from those evident in the adult Discworld. It is, indeed, and as advertised on the cover, a Discworld fable. A version of the Pied Piper fable, retold with style. What is does brilliantly, though, and in its own right, is cosset the reader in the murk of the rat tunnels in which so much time is spent. You are underground, swaddled in darkness throughout, and though much of it is funny, there is a real and urgent sense of fear in the book. There is malice and fright and wit and death and laughter, all underpinned by the particular brand of common-sense, ethical and humane logic that makes Pratchett so much more than just a fantasy author.

The characters are, perhaps, a little too typical of the Discworld. Animals made intelligent by magic who go on to demonstrate how unintelligent humans can be. It is a trick we have seen before. The Amazing Maurice, like Gaspode the Wonder Dog, is a street-wise, self-regarding voice at the heels of the humans. But then, Maurice seems a little less sure of himself than Gaspode, a little more fearful behind the bravado. And this difference, though possibly too subtle for the occasional Pratchett reader, is beautifully played out when Maurice battles with his own mind and that of Spider. It is a superbly written sequence, balanced wonderfully against the joyous new character of Sardines. Now he really is a rat to remember.

The Amazing Maurice, I think, would have been my favourite book if I had read it when I was a child. As an adult it still registers as a wonderful, pacy, atmospheric tale that, within the limits of the children's fable, rates as highly as anything Pratchett has ever done.