There's something very strange about the rats living under the rosebush in the Fitzgibbon farm. But Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with a sick child, is in dire straits and must turn to these exceptional creatures for assistance. Soon she finds herself flying on the back of a crow, slipping sleeping powder into a ferocious cat's dinner dish, and helping 108 brilliant, laboratory-enhanced rats escape to a utopian civilisation of their own design, no longer to live "on the … mehredge of somebody else's, like fleas on a dog's back." This unusual novel, winner of the Newbery Medal (among a host of other accolades) grabs the reader on page one and reels in steadily all the way through to the exhilarating conclusion. Robert O'Brien has created a small but complete world in which a mother's concern for her son overpowers her fear of all her natural enemies and allows her to make some extraordinary discoveries along the way. O'Brien's incredible tale, along with Zena Bernstein's appealing ink drawings, ensures that readers will never look at alley rats and field mice the same way again. (Ages 9 to 12) --Emilie Coulter weniger