User:Hvelraj/sandbox

On the topic of historical fiction and its influence on modern views of race relations, literary scholar Rachelle Kuehl notes that Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series has received backlash for her problematic portrayal of Native Americans.

I would put this sentence in the ‘Authorship controversy’ section.

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Lead section
Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a 1971 children's science fiction/fantasy book by American writer Robert C. O'Brien, with illustrations by Zena Bernstein. The novel was published by the New York City publishing house Atheneum Books, which has been owned by Simon & Schuster since 1994.

This book was the winner of numerous awards including the 1972 Newbery Medal. Ten years following its publication, the story was adapted for film as The Secret of NIMH (1982).

The novel centers around a colony of escaped lab rats–the rats of NIMH–who live in a technologically sophisticated and literate society mimicking that of humans. They come to the aid of Mrs. Frisby, a widowed field mouse who seeks to protect her children and home from destruction by a farmer’s plow.

The rats of NIMH were inspired by the research of John B. Calhoun on mouse and rat population dynamics at the National Institute of Mental Health from the 1940s to the 1960s.

After O’Brien’s death in 1973, his daughter Jane Leslie Conly wrote two more sequels to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

Plot summary
Mrs. Frisby, a recently widowed field mouse, lives with her four children in a cinder block which is in a farmer named Mr. Fitzgibbon’s garden. Her son Timothy is sick with pneumonia just as the farmer begins planning for spring plowing the garden. Normally, the family would move to their summer home to avoid being uprooted, but Timothy is too ill to move. An older mouse named Mr. Ages, who was a friend of Mrs. Frisby’s late husband Jonathan gives her some medicine to give to Timothy. Then, on her way home, she saves the life of a young crow named Jeremy from the farmer’s cat, Dragon. In return, Jeremy flies Mrs. Frisby to an owl’s tree so that she can ask for help with moving her family. When the owl finds out that Mrs. Frisby is the widow of his old friend Jonathan, he suggests that she seek help from the rats who live in a rosebush on the farm.

Frisby discovers that the rats have a literate and mechanized society. They have technology such as elevators, have tapped the electricity grid to provide lighting and heating, and have acquired other human skills, such as storing food for the winter. Their leader, Nicodemus, tells Frisby of the rats' capture by scientists working for a laboratory located at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH for short) and the subsequent experiments that the humans performed on the rats, which increased the rats' intelligence to the point of being able to read, write and operate complicated machines, as well as enhancing their longevity and strength. This increased intelligence and strength allowed them to escape from NIMH and migrate to their present location on the farm. Jonathan and Ages were the only two survivors of a group of eight mice who had been part of the experiments at NIMH and made the rats' escape possible.

Out of their respect and unending gratitude for Jonathan, the rats agree to move Frisby's house to a location safe from the plow. Nicodemus also tells Frisby about their recent decision to abandon their lifestyle of dependence on humans, which some rats regard as theft. Instead, the rats aim to live independently. This is referred to as The Plan. One rat, Jenner, disagreed vehemently with it and left with a group of followers at some point before Frisby's arrival.

To move the Frisby home, the rats have to drug Dragon. Mrs. Frisby learns that Jonathan was killed by Dragon while attempting to drug him. Ages has broken his leg and is unable to put the drug into Dragon's bowl. Since the rats are too big to fit into the hole in the wall to enter the farmer's house, Frisby volunteers to go, but she is caught by the farmer's son, Billy, who puts her in a birdcage. While captured, Frisby overhears the farmer and his family discussing an incident at a nearby hardware store in which a group of rats was electrocuted after seemingly attempting to steal a small motor. This has attracted the attention of a group of men who have offered to exterminate the rats on the farmer's land free of charge for him. At night, the rat Justin comes to save Frisby and manages to get her out of the cage. The rats manage to move the Frisby house out of the way of the plow using a pulley and scaffolding system.

The successful house move allows the mouse family to remain so that Timothy has time to recover before moving to their summer home. Mrs. Frisby warns the rats of what she learned while captured; they assume that the rats at the hardware store were Jenner's accomplices, and that the group of men were from NIMH and are looking for them specifically. To fool the exterminators, the rats get rid of all their human-like technology and create the illusion that they are just regular rats by placing rubbish in the remaining rooms. As the others move, ten rats stay behind so the exterminators will not think the rat hole has been abandoned. When the exterminators fill the rat hole with poisonous gas, eight of the ten rats manage to escape, while the remaining two die in the hole. Once Timothy recovers, Frisby and her family move to their summer home.

Awards and Critical Acclaim
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH won numerous awards including the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, Newbery Medal, and the runner-up National Book Award in 1972; the Mark Twain Award in 1973; the Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Readers’ Choice Award and the William Allan White Children’s Book Award in 1974.

In 2012 it was ranked number 33 on a list of the top 100 children's novels published by School Library Journal.

Since its release, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH has received widespread praise from scholars, critics of children’s literature, and children themselves. In 1985, Alethea K Helbig called Mrs. Frisby “a combination of science fiction and animal fantasy” that described “fantastic situations with scientific accuracy. Scholar Paula T. Connolly noted the book for Conly’s “gradations of moral understanding and culpability” while dealing with “such problematic issues as the roles of science and technology, identity, idealism, family life, forms of community and means of survival."

In a paper titled “The Critical Reader in Children’s Metafiction,” literary scholar Joe Sanders wrote that Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH’s emphasis on the rats’ abilities to read mirrors the “growing reading abilities of the novel’s own target audience.” Sanders argues that the book portrays "the act of reading" as "clearly liberatory.” Reading allows the rats to create a thriving human-like society once escaping from NIMH. Furthermore, reading serves as a gateway for the rats to discover that humans dislike them because they steal . “Scientific and philosophical treatises help the rats understand what their role is in the world and that if they are to be anything more than thieves, they must become a self-sustaining community. ” In essence, Sanders finds that O’Brien promotes reading as an empowering tool which is an important lesson that children learn through reading this book.

The following is an excerpt from a review by Jim Flanigan, age 10, of the novel in Storyworks Magazine in 2004: “This book is full of danger and excitement! My favorite scene in the book was when Mrs. Frisby rode on a crow's back to the wise owl for advice. They flew two miles in the air, which is high for a mouse!”.

Critical Review/Negative reception
The following is an excerpt from a review by Alyssa Finfer, age 10, of the novel in Creative Kids in 2010: “The author, Robert C. O'Brien, wrote the book in a way that makes you feel like you are a mouse or a rat. It made me fear things like mousetraps, pest controls, cats, and, most of all, humans. Several passages from the book gave me chills and made me feel very small. One thing I didn't like about this book was that it didn't really grab my attention until the middle of it.”.

In a retrospective essay about the Newbery Medal-winning books from 1966 to 1975, children's author John Rowe Townsend wrote: "It seems to me that the fact that all the animals talk and behave intelligently from the beginning of the story detracts from the spectacular development of the laboratory rats... Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is a pleasing book, but I find it mildly frustrating; it might have been something more than it is".

Impact on American views of scientific technology
In a 2019 essay, American studies scholar Arahshiel Rose Silver wrote that Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH “reflect the many scientific and technological anxieties present in 1960s American culture.”. During this period, scientific advancements–especially in the field of genetics–increased fears about the increased pervasiveness of technology in everyday life. A culture of fear began to grow surrounding unethical medical and scientific practices, which are heavily reflected in the book. Silver argued that Conly's book lays out an example of technological development ending poorly, giving both children reading the book and their parents a lot to think about.

Related works
After his death, O'Brien's daughter, Jane Leslie Conly, wrote two other novels based on the rats of NIMH. Racso and the Rats of NIMH (1986) tells the story of a city rat who runs away to join the new colony, befriending Timothy, while saving the colony from a flood along the way. In R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH (1990), the rats rescue two lost human children who in turn help to save the colony before winter. “Conly’s books continue her father’s emphasis on the theme of social responsibility while weaving in new characters with more personal problems”.

1982 version[edit]
In 1982, the animated film The Secret of NIMH was released, directed by Don Bluth. The film adds a mystical element completely absent from the novel, with Nicodemus portrayed as a wise, bearded old wizard with magic powers and an enchanted amulet, rather than an equal of the other rats. The character of Jenner is made a villain who is still present with the rats, rather than having left them before the story begins. The crow Jeremy has much greater prominence as comic relief in the film than he has in the book. Additionally, the Frisby family name was changed to "Brisby" to avoid trademark infringement with the Frisbee.

In 1998, The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue, a sequel to the 1982 film was released. This movie was not related to the sequels of the original novel, and Don Bluth was not involved.

Live-action/animated reboot[edit]
In July 2009, Paramount Pictures set Neil Burger to write the script and Cary Granat to produce the film based on the book. Nothing has materialized since and the rights to the book have since lapsed.

In March 2015, MGM, which had released the 1982 film, acquired the rights to the book to adapt it into a live-action/animated film. Michael Berg was set to adapt it, while Daniel Bobker and Ehren Kruger would produce.

The Russo brothers were set as executive producers of the remake as of April 2019.

Television series[edit]
A television series based on the books was in development at Fox as an event series in September 2021.