Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

by Robert C. O’Brien
Read: Middle school?, July 2008
Rating: J’adore

If you have never read about Mrs. Frisby, you are missing are a wonderful, crucial piece of childhood. I was given the movie, The Secret of NIMH (also reviewed below, when I was really, really young. Both my parents enjoyed watching it with me, and it was one of my favorites. I think I read the book for the first time in middle school, but I really can’t remember.

Recently, I discovered that one of my best friends, who I hadn’t known when we were tiny, also loved the movie. And also loved Justin the rat. And she had bought the DVD for $9. That set up a desire to read the book again, and I finally got around to it. The stories lead in different directions, but both are still as wonderful as I always knew they were.

Mrs. Frisby is a widowed mother of four. They spend their winters warm and snug in a cinderblock half-buried in the famer’s garden. This block is in the path of the spring plowing, and usually they move to their summer home in the forest, but her son Timothy has taken ill with pneumonia and can’t be moved in the cold. Afraid for his life, Mrs. Frisby seeks help from unlikely sources.

The rats live under a rosebush in the farmer’s garden. They keep to themselves. They’re large, and busy, and the other animals stay away. But Mrs. Frisby has seen them doing unusual things–like carrying an electric cable into their nest. It turns out that her husband, Mr. Jonathan Frisby, was a great friend to the rats, and so they may help her.

These are no ordinary rats. They are former test subjects of the scientists as NIMH: The National Institute for Mental Health, which really exists. We learn their extraordinary story alongside Mrs. Frisby–and how her husband knew them, and consequently how he died.

It is a children’s story with horrible consequences waiting in the wing and treated frankly. If Timothy is exposed to the cold too soon, he will die. If the family stays in their home too long, they may all be killed by the farmers. Mrs. Frisby puts her own life on the line repeatedly, both as an ordinary fieldmouse evading the cat while she looks for food, and as a heroine voluntarily putting herself in harm’s way in order to save her children. She is kind, courageous, and loving.

My reading will always be tinged by the film. Don Bluth turned it into a movie in 1981, melding science and a little magic with the original story. Characters were changed, Nicodemus becoming a cryptic sage and Jenner the active villain. Jeremy is comic relief, voiced by Dom DeLouise. The book is a faithful adaption until Mrs. Brisby’s (yes, her name changes, too) escape from the bird cage. After that it takes a drastically different turn, but not one that unsettled me as a child. The book remains within the realm of the possible, which helps one to believe in it. The movie goes way out in left field, and I still can’t work out exactly what is supposed to have happened there. All I know is that it’s beautiful and fulfilling to watch.

Rereading the book, I wasn’t unhappy about it either. The book feels more anticlimatic. The movie pivots on whether or not they will successfully move the cinderblock, and the book does as well… but it goes much too smoothly, and there’s another 25 pages of low tension that feels rather out of place. My heart, alas, will belong to the movie.

What the movie didn’t change is Mrs. Frisby’s heart. She is always herself, always brave–and not brazen, but truly brave. She is afraid, desperately afraid. But her options are few, and she will always take the path that best serves everyone.

Here’s a peculiar thing that maybe no one else has ever picked up on except for me and my friend. Justin the rat… is really, well, hot. Even as little girls, in separate lives, we both thought so. I think he was one of my first crushes. Because he’s what you want a man to be–really bright, intuitive, not at all foolhardy but brave, and emotionally receptive. I’ve always wished for a little Brisby/Justin romance. Then again, a Google search says other people have thought the same. (And no, they’re not all furries, and neither am I.)

One last nitpicky detail. If you have a child who nitpicks, you’ll want to be forewarned of this. The rats, when speaking, will often refer to things that a fieldmouse like Mrs. Frisby wouldn’t know a damn thing about. For instance “Slide down it like a fireman’s pole” or “it looked like Christmas morning.” The books has no time or place restrictions, though it feels like a classic British telling, but it also does not take the quaint habit of assuming the mice live parallel lives to us, with their own Christmas. The rats have done and seen things well beyond what Mrs. Frisby can imagine. And it bothers me that they talk abother these things, like they’ve forgotten that she doesn’t know them. It’s possible they’re forgetting that she isn’t her husband. But they’re supposed to be smart, dammit! Clearly Mrs. F is just too polite to interrupt.

This is a book and movie set that I’ll return to in times when I need comforting. It’s like mom’s personalized spaghetti sauce recipe.