Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a humorous, witty, and thought-provoking fantasy peopled with small animals living in today's technological world.  A field mouse, Mrs. Frisby by name, cannot move her children from their winter home, which lies directly in the path of the farmer's spring plowing, because Timothy has pneumonia.  First with fear and later with admiration and gratitude, she accepts help from her neighbors, the resourceful rats of NIMH.  Injected with a special formula at an experimental laboratory, the rats have become more intelligent than their captors.  When they escape from the laboratory, they make preparations to set-up a civilization of their own, based on their ability to produce, rather than steal.  Helping Mrs. Frisby with her problems proves to be mutually beneficial.  The sympathetic pen-and-ink drawings by Zena Bernstein involve the reader even more deeply.