The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents [Hardcover]

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

'Other writers are mining the rich seam of comic fantasy that Pratchett first unearthed, but what keeps Pratchett on top is - quite literally - the way he tells them' The Times; 'Pratchett's writing is a constant delight. No one mixes the fantastical and mundane to better comic effect or offers sharper insights into the absurdities of human endeavour' Daily Mail

"An enticing and occasionally gory introduction to the master of flat earth... proves that the Pied Piper of Hamelin was a front for an insider-dealing scam... alongside the gags and pest-control politics, there are enough complex ideas about nature, nurture and understanding to satisfy a wide audience."
"--Observer
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"One of Terry Pratchett's funniest creations of recent years... It all adds up to a wonderful book... hilarious, brilliantly constructed and, especially towards its conclusion, shot through with an edginess to balance the laughs."
--"SFX"

"A brilliant and bizarre reworking of that well-known folk tale about the Pied Piper of Hamelin."
--"School Librarian" --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

A fantastic new B format edition of the master storyteller's Carnegie Medal-winning junior Discworld novel --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Maurice has survived four years on the toughest streets of Discworld. He reckons that rats are dumb, but he's smart enough to realize that there's a new kind of rat around - rats who can talk. This smart cat gets his own "plague of rats" and a Pied Piper, but are there any ordinary rats left? Ages 8+.

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.

Terry Pratchett's previous children's titles include Truckers, Diggers, Wings, Only You Can Save Mankind, Johnny and the Dead (which was successfully televised) and Johnny and the Bomb, which won a Smarties Prize Silver Medal and was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. He lives in Wiltshire

Rats!
They chased the dogs and bit the cats, they––
But there was more to it than that. As the amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.
But Malicia Grim said it was a story about stories.
It began – part of it began – on the mail coach that came over the mountains from the distant cities of the plain.
This was the part of the journey that the driver didn’t like. The way wound through forests and around mountains on crumbling roads. There were deep shadows between the trees. Sometimes he thought things were following the coach, keeping just out of sight. It gave him the willies.
And on this journey, the really big willie was that he could hear voices. He was sure of it. They were coming from behind him, from the top of the coach, and there was nothing there but the big oilcloth mail-sacks and the young man’s luggage. There was certainly nothing big enough for a person to hide inside. But occasionally he was sure he heard squeaky voices, whispering.
There was only one passenger at this point. He was a fair-haired young man, sitting all by himself inside the rocking coach, reading a book. He was reading slowly, and aloud, moving his finger over the words.
‘Ubberwald,’ he read out.
‘That’s “Überwald”,’ said a small, squeaky but very clear voice. ‘The dots make it a sort of long “ooo” sound. But you’re doing well.’
‘Ooooooberwald?’
‘There’s such a thing as too much pronunciation, kid,’ said another voice, which sounded half asleep. ‘But you know the best thing about Überwald? It’s a long, long way from Sto Lat. It’s a long way from Pseudopolis. It’s a long way from anywhere where the Commander of the Watch says he’ll have us boiled alive if he ever sees us again. And it’s not very modern. Bad roads. Lots of mountains in the way. People don’t move about much up here. So news doesn’t travel very fast, see? And they probably don’t have policemen. Kid, we can make a fortune here!’
‘Maurice?’ said the boy, carefully.
‘Yes, kid?’
‘You don’t think what we’re doing is, you know . . . dishonest, do you?’
There was a pause before the voice said, ‘How do you mean, dishonest?’
‘Well . . . we take their money, Maurice.’ The coach rocked and bounced over a pot-hole.
‘All right,’ said the unseen Maurice, ‘but what you’ve got to ask yourself is: who do we take the money from, actually?’
‘Well . . . it’s generally the mayor or the city council or someone like that.’
‘Right! And that means it’s . . . what? I’ve told you this bit before.’
‘Er . . .’
‘It is gov-ern-ment money, kid,’ said Maurice patiently. ‘Say it? Gov-ern-ment money.’
‘Gov-ern-ment money,’ said the boy obediently.
‘Right! And what do governments do with money?’
‘Er, they . . .’
‘They pay soldiers,’ said Maurice. ‘They have wars. In fact, we’ve prob’ly stopped a lot of wars by taking the money and putting it where it can’t do any harm. They’d put up stachoos to us, if they thought about it.’
‘Some of those towns looked pretty poor, Maurice,’ said the kid doubtfully.
‘Hey, just the kind of places that don’t need wars, then.’
‘Dangerous Beans says it’s . . .’ The boy concentrated, and his lips moved before he said the word, as if he was trying out the pronunciation to himself, ‘. . . It’s un-eth-ickle.’
‘That’s right, Maurice,’ said the squeaky voice. ‘Dangerous Beans says we shouldn’t live by trickery.’
‘Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about,’ said the voice of Maurice. ‘They’re so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them. We give them value for money. They get a horrible plague of rats, they pay a rat piper, the rats all follow the kid out of town, hoppity-skip, end of plague, everyone’s happy that no-one’s widdling in the flour any more, the government gets re-elected by a grateful population, general celebration all round. Money well spent, in my opinion.’

‘But there’s only a plague because we make them think there is,’ said the voice of Peaches.
‘Well, my dear, another thing all those little governments spend their money on is rat-catchers, see? I don’t know why I bother with the lot of you, I really don’t.’
‘Yes, but we––’
They realized that the coach had stopped. Outside, in the rain, there was the jingle of harness. Then the coach rocked a little, and there was the sound of running feet.
A voice from out of the darkness said, ‘Are there any wizards in there?’
The occupants looked at one another in puzzlement.
‘No?’ said the kid, the kind of ‘no’ that means ‘why are you asking?’
‘How about any witches?’ said the voice.
‘No, no witches,’ said the kid.
‘Right. Are there any heavily-armed trolls employed by the mail-coach company in there?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Maurice.
There was a moment’s pause, filled with the sound of the rain.
‘OK, how about werewolves?’ said the voice eventually.
‘What do they look like?’ asked the kid.
‘Ah, well, they look perfectly normal right up to the point where they grow all, like, hair and teeth and giant paws and leap through the window at you,’ said the voice. The speaker sounded as though he was working through a list.
‘We’ve all got hair and teeth,’ said the kid.
‘So you are werewolves, then?’
‘No.’
‘Fine, fine.’ There was another pause filled with rain. ‘OK, vampires,’ said the voice. ‘It’s a wet night, you wouldn’t want to be flying in weather like this. Any vampires in there?’
‘No!’ said the kid. ‘We’re all perfectly harmless!’
‘Oh boy,’ muttered Maurice, and crawled under the seat.