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Classic kidlit rereads
In between the other books I've been rereading, there were also a couple of rereads of older books.
Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of Nimh - I reread this one a few days ago after randomly finding it while looking for something else on my bookshelves. I still feel as I did the first time I read it, or watched the movie - whichever came first for me, I genuinely don't remember now - that this book has an absolute genius premise in how it plays around with the tropes of classic children's animal literature.
Cut for anyone who doesn't actually want to know the big spoiler in the premise (which is revealed in full about halfway through the book).
In the beginning, of course, it's just a talking animal book - of course they talk and behave like people and have workshops, and cute little living rooms, and carpets, and books. And then you get the gradually unfolding reveal that the reason why so much of this is happening, is because these are an escaped group of uplifted rats and mice from a lab. (NIMH is National Institute of Mental Health.) And the non-uplifted animals of the fields and woods, while we do still have the general understanding that we can understand them talking and that they have names, are really different. The book doesn't follow through on this in every aspect, but it mostly does; the non-uplifted animals have an animal's problem-solving skill set (Jeremy the crow, who can't understand any way to free himself when he's tangled in a ribbon except by flinging himself against it over and over) and a much shorter lifespan.
I really liked how the uplifted and non-uplifted animals are both somewhat alien in their own ways, to each other as well as to the reader. The animals of course are animals, but the uplifted rats aren't miniature humans; they want to find out what a rat civilization would be like, starting over basically from scratch rather than living as thieves and hangers-on in the shadows of human civilization.
And it's also a really interesting choice to make the POV character one of the non-uplifted mice who doesn't fully understand a lot of what the uplifted rats explain to her, at least not to the extent that the reader does, though she's still clever and resourceful in her own way. (Reading this, I feel like Mrs. Frisby is kind of in between the ordinary field animals and the uplifted animals in a sense; she's been uplifted a bit herself because of Jonathan explaining things to her.)
Also a really interesting choice, maybe unique in kids' lit that I can think of - having as the viewpoint character, not just an adult, but a widowed mom with several kids, with the plot generally wrapped around trying to save one of her kids. I can't think of another book quite like it.
I remembered the character death, though I'd forgotten how hard this book goes on some of the bleaker stuff, including how he actually dies - plus, we never know for sure if he did die, or exactly what happens to the rats, since Mrs. Frisby is unlikely to see them again. I've only seen the movie once, I think, a very long time ago, so I don't know how the movie handled that or if the character death was also in it, although I think it was?
Anyway, I really enjoyed it! A fun quick read, a classic for a reason.
A Wrinkle in Time - I had pulled out this one and several others in the series to reread around the time I did my Dark Is Rising reread a couple of years ago, and finally got around to it. I remember a lot of this book really well - I must have reread it a ton as a kid, because I remember the broad shape of the plot as well as, in vivid detail, a number of images from the book, like the kids all bouncing their balls in unison, the disembodied brain, or Meg starting to pass out and dipping her head to inhale from the oxygen flower. What I didn't remember is how it all connected together, how it ended (I can see why), or how absolutely batshit insane this book is.
I do feel like this is one of those cases where this book, which I loved so much as a kid, doesn't quite hold together for me as an adult. The vivid parts are still vivid, the first few chapters in particular are a masterclass in holding the reader's attention while nothing much is actually happening, but by the end I felt - undercharmed, I guess? I found both the book's general level of batshit weirdness, and Meg herself as a protagonist, a lot harder to take than I remember either of them being when I used to reread it. And while I knew there were religious elements elsewhere in the series (one of the books literally deals with the Biblical flood; I definitely remembered that) I didn't remember the religiosity of this book AT ALL.
Which is fine! The fact that I loved this book as a kid means that it hit its target audience, and I am no longer its target audience, so the fact that it doesn't work for me nearly as well now is, perhaps, peak success mode for a book aimed at kids/teens. It was interesting to reread those scenes I remembered so well with adult eyes. I ended it feeling like I'd had about enough L'Engle for now, and will perhaps reread some of the others later, when I've had some time to recover from the experience of reading this one.
Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of Nimh - I reread this one a few days ago after randomly finding it while looking for something else on my bookshelves. I still feel as I did the first time I read it, or watched the movie - whichever came first for me, I genuinely don't remember now - that this book has an absolute genius premise in how it plays around with the tropes of classic children's animal literature.
Cut for anyone who doesn't actually want to know the big spoiler in the premise (which is revealed in full about halfway through the book).
In the beginning, of course, it's just a talking animal book - of course they talk and behave like people and have workshops, and cute little living rooms, and carpets, and books. And then you get the gradually unfolding reveal that the reason why so much of this is happening, is because these are an escaped group of uplifted rats and mice from a lab. (NIMH is National Institute of Mental Health.) And the non-uplifted animals of the fields and woods, while we do still have the general understanding that we can understand them talking and that they have names, are really different. The book doesn't follow through on this in every aspect, but it mostly does; the non-uplifted animals have an animal's problem-solving skill set (Jeremy the crow, who can't understand any way to free himself when he's tangled in a ribbon except by flinging himself against it over and over) and a much shorter lifespan.
I really liked how the uplifted and non-uplifted animals are both somewhat alien in their own ways, to each other as well as to the reader. The animals of course are animals, but the uplifted rats aren't miniature humans; they want to find out what a rat civilization would be like, starting over basically from scratch rather than living as thieves and hangers-on in the shadows of human civilization.
And it's also a really interesting choice to make the POV character one of the non-uplifted mice who doesn't fully understand a lot of what the uplifted rats explain to her, at least not to the extent that the reader does, though she's still clever and resourceful in her own way. (Reading this, I feel like Mrs. Frisby is kind of in between the ordinary field animals and the uplifted animals in a sense; she's been uplifted a bit herself because of Jonathan explaining things to her.)
Also a really interesting choice, maybe unique in kids' lit that I can think of - having as the viewpoint character, not just an adult, but a widowed mom with several kids, with the plot generally wrapped around trying to save one of her kids. I can't think of another book quite like it.
I remembered the character death, though I'd forgotten how hard this book goes on some of the bleaker stuff, including how he actually dies - plus, we never know for sure if he did die, or exactly what happens to the rats, since Mrs. Frisby is unlikely to see them again. I've only seen the movie once, I think, a very long time ago, so I don't know how the movie handled that or if the character death was also in it, although I think it was?
Anyway, I really enjoyed it! A fun quick read, a classic for a reason.
A Wrinkle in Time - I had pulled out this one and several others in the series to reread around the time I did my Dark Is Rising reread a couple of years ago, and finally got around to it. I remember a lot of this book really well - I must have reread it a ton as a kid, because I remember the broad shape of the plot as well as, in vivid detail, a number of images from the book, like the kids all bouncing their balls in unison, the disembodied brain, or Meg starting to pass out and dipping her head to inhale from the oxygen flower. What I didn't remember is how it all connected together, how it ended (I can see why), or how absolutely batshit insane this book is.
I do feel like this is one of those cases where this book, which I loved so much as a kid, doesn't quite hold together for me as an adult. The vivid parts are still vivid, the first few chapters in particular are a masterclass in holding the reader's attention while nothing much is actually happening, but by the end I felt - undercharmed, I guess? I found both the book's general level of batshit weirdness, and Meg herself as a protagonist, a lot harder to take than I remember either of them being when I used to reread it. And while I knew there were religious elements elsewhere in the series (one of the books literally deals with the Biblical flood; I definitely remembered that) I didn't remember the religiosity of this book AT ALL.
Which is fine! The fact that I loved this book as a kid means that it hit its target audience, and I am no longer its target audience, so the fact that it doesn't work for me nearly as well now is, perhaps, peak success mode for a book aimed at kids/teens. It was interesting to reread those scenes I remembered so well with adult eyes. I ended it feeling like I'd had about enough L'Engle for now, and will perhaps reread some of the others later, when I've had some time to recover from the experience of reading this one.
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O'Brien did write two other science fiction novels that I read around the same time, The Silver Crown (1968) and Z for Zachariah (1974); the internet informs me there was a fourth I never ran into. I have fewer memories of The Silver Crown as a sort of YA-sized paranoid thriller that starts with a curio and escalates to a conspiracy. Z for Zachariah is a post-apocalyptic two-hander that sets up a lot of familiar end-of-the-world situations with its sixteen-year-old narrator homesteading it single-handedly when the potential only other survivor in her part of the world or perhaps the entire world falls radiation-poisoned across her doorstep and then averts almost all of them. I keep meaning to re-read it every time I'm reminded it exists.
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