20 Bad Books To Give To Young Kids

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8. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Like Watership Down, this book depicts a seemingly fuzzy, comforting subject – furry little critters – and pushes it down a terrifying path. Did authors of the 1960s and 1970s have some sort of problem with rodents?

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH isn’t necessarily cruel towards its subjects. The eponymous Mrs. Frisby is a widowed field mouse who must rescue her home from a farmer’s plow. Her young son, Timothy, is also sick with pneumonia, just to add a twist to the knife.

To help her family, Mrs. Frisby attempts to team up with a group of escaped lab rats who have developed their own complex society. The rats have electricity, lighting, heating, and even miniature elevators. Their leader, Nicodemus, tells Mrs. Frisby of their time as experimental test subjects at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Experiments made the rats so intelligent that they learned to read and write. It’s also made them longer-lived and much stronger than the average rat. Though they’ve escaped, humans are on the lookout for these intelligent rats and their advanced colony.

Now, Mrs. Frisby must not only save her family and home, but she must protect the rats. All ends well, but it’s a weird ride nonetheless.