The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
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| Author | Terry Pratchett |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series |
Discworld 28th novel – 5th individual story |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
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Publication date
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1 November 2001 |
| Awards | Winner of the 2001 Carnegie Medal. |
| ISBN | (hardcover) |
| Preceded by | The Last Hero |
| Followed by | The Night Watch |
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents is a children's fantasy by Terry Pratchett, published by Doubleday in 2001. It was the 28th novel in the Discworld series but the first written for children. The story is a new take on the German fairy tale about the Pied Piper of Hamelin and a parody of the folk tale genre.
Pratchett won the annual Carnegie Medal from the British librarians, recognising the year's best children's book published in the U.K. It was his first major award.
Discworld had been a comic fantasy series for adults, beginning with The Colour of Magic in 1983. Amazing Maurice was marketed as a children's book, to be followed in that respect by The Wee Free Men (2003, #30). It differs from earlier Discworld novels also by its division into chapters, though chapters become far more common in later books. Contrary to the contrast between adult and child markets, reflected in catalogues, The Guardian observed on the occasion of the Carnegie Medal that "[t]he main audience for Pratchett's 48 books, all busily in print, is teenagers, who are drawn by his irrepressible invention and sense of mischief."
Maurice and his Educated Rodents were not entirely new; they had been mentioned as early as Reaper Man (1991, #11).
The Amazing Maurice is a sentient cat who leads his "Educated Rodents", a group of sentient rats, as they go from town to town posing as a plague so that their accomplice, a teenage human piper named Keith, can "lure them all away" from the town, after which they share the money the piper receives. The rats had gained intelligence from eating the waste from the rubbish tip behind Unseen University; Maurice gained it after eating one of the rats, before he was capable of realizing that they were no longer normal rats.
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