The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

This is the first of Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' novels to be written for young readers, and it is a postmodern children's book, which will not deter its intended audience but will give extra pleasure to their elders. Maurice, a wonderful creation who is both cat and con-man, says 'it is just a story about people and rats', with the slight complication that it becomes harder and harder to tell which is which. For Malicia Grim (the Mayor's daughter, and grandchild of two great story-tellers, the sisters Grim) it is 'a story about stories'. Both are right. The book is a reworking of 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin', and shot through with glimpses of Peter Rabbit, Rupert Bear, Ratty in the Wild Wood, the Famous Five and Cinderella, giving plenty of intertextual fun. But it also repeatedly raises the question: Where does fiction end and reality begin? Malicia, a story-addict, has a lot of trouble here. Yet Maurice, the streetwise feline realist, is correct. This is a story about people and rats. It's just that these rats, having eaten discarded rubbish at a wizards' university, have learned to think and talk, and Maurice, having eaten one of the rats (with the inspired name of Additives) has gained the same powers by genetic ingestation. Helped by a human piper, Maurice and the rats have developed a profiteering Hamelin scam, and all is well until they come to the town of Bad Blintz. Here they encounter evil, in both human and rat forms, and only after a very dark and exciting comedy in the cellars and tunnels of Bad Blintz do they emerge, scarred but victorious. Just how such a claustrophobic, menacing thriller can be so consistently light and funny is Pratchett's secret. Children, and very old children indeed, will enjoy being admitted to it in this original (and traditional) story.