On the plane to Florida, I read The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett. I've always meant to get around to reading more Terry Pratchett (the only one I've read was Good Omens by him and Neil Gaiman) so when I saw this one on the suggested reading list for class I wanted to make sure to add it to my pile. Its a fantasy, pied-piper kind of story, with a talking cat and some pretty smart rats.
The summary given for the book says, "A talking cat, intelligent rats, and a strange boy cooperate in a Pied Piper scam until they try to con the wrong town and are confronted by a deadly evil rat king." Publisher's Weekly explains that, "For this outrageously cheeky tale, British writer Pratchett pairs a dynamite plot with memorable characters a group of intelligent rats sporting such monikers as Hamnpork, Big Savings and Darktan (they've been foraging in the University of Wizards' garbage dump and come up with "the kind of name you gave yourself if you learned to read before you understood what all the words actually meant"), plus a "stupid-looking kid" with a flute and a criminal kitty mastermind named Maurice." School Library Journal calls it a "laugh-out-loud fantasy" and suggests that "Readers who enjoyed Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Atheneum, 1971) and Richard Adams's Watership Down (Macmillan, 1974) will love this story."
I enjoyed it -- its a really easy, accessible fantasy. If you don't like talking animal books, this one probably isn't for you. For some reason the rats growing awareness of morals and ideas and maps and things (they learned to think after eating something from a wizard's garbage pile) reminded me of the conversation the whale in Hitchhiker's has as he's falling to earth ("Calm down, get a grip now ... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It's a sort of ... yawning, tingling sensation in my ... my ... well I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let's call it my stomach.").... but that may just be me.
There are some scary scenes in the final battle against the evil rat king and giant rats, which is why this is probably rated as a YA rather than a kids book.
Winner of the 2001 Carnegie Medal, Gr 7 Up, Ages 12+