science

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents rather than just read about it. In short: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is a children's fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, published by Doubleday in 2001. It is the twenty-eighth novel in the Discworld series and the first written for children.

Key takeaways

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is a children's fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, published by Doubleday in 2001. It is the twenty-eighth novel in the Discworld series and 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.

Series 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 of the series. 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 previously mentioned in the eleventh Discworld novel, Reaper Man (1991), although the characters in that novel are aware of the fraud perpetrated by Maurice and the rats.

Plot summary The book opens with Amazing Maurice (a sentient cat), a group of talking rats (the Clan), and the human boy Keith travelling in a mail coach to a small town called Bad Blintz. The group plans to enact a scheme they have used many times before, where in the rats pretend to infest the town and Keith poses as a rat piper to lead the "vermin" away for a small sum of cash. Although Maurice sees nothing wrong with this hustling business, the rats find it immoral, and convince Maurice that this town will be the last one they rob. Upon arriving in town, the group discovers that the people are convinced of a massive rat infestation, and have spent much of their savings on two rat catchers. Despite their efforts, food continues to disappear from the town. As the rats move into the town's underground, they discover an overwhelmingly large number of rat traps, but no live keekees (rats who cannot talk or think). Above ground, Maurice makes similar observations, including that many of the rat tails the rat catchers display as proof of their successful hunting are in fact shoelaces. Maurice and Keith meet the mayor's daughter Malicia and introduce her to the talking rats. Malicia believes that the rat catchers are up to something and so she, Maurice, and Keith break into the rat catchers' hut. They discover a great deal of food stolen by the men and large cages where the local keekees are being bred for coursing. The rat catchers return and lock up the humans, taking away the rat leader Hamnpork who had met up with them. Maurice hides and feels a voice trying to enter his mind, inciting a great sense of fear. The rats of the Clan feel it too, and many become so afraid that they all but forget how to think and reason. Dangerous Beans, the rats' spiritual leader, is crushed by the realization that the rats are just mindless animals at heart, and leaves with his assistant Peaches. Darktan, the rats' trap expert, leads a group to rescue Hamnpork, and succeeds after nearly dying in a trap. Hamnpork dies of injuries sustained while fighting in the rat coursing pit, and Darktan reluctantly assumes leadership of the Clan. Malicia and Keith, after freeing themselves, trick the rat catchers into admitting their crimes. The rat catchers have created a powerful rat king named Spider, which is the source of the mysterious voice that has been plaguing the rats and Maurice. Using its mental control over the rat catchers, Spider plans to wage war on the humans that created it. It sends the rats it controls to attack Maurice, Peaches, and Dangerous Beans. However, Maurice (so terrified that he stops thinking and acts instinctively) pounces on the rat king and destroys it. In his panic, Maurice also unwittingly kills Dangerous Beans. Maurice emerges from Spider's chamber carrying the body of Dangerous Beans. When he is safely out, he collapses and dies. In ghostly form, he sees the Death of Rats coming for Dangerous Beans and makes a deal with Death: two of his remaining lives in exchange for both his life and the albino rat's. The rats corral all the keekees and block their ears. When a real rat piper arrives in town, Keith challenges him to a duel. The piper plays his magic rat pipe but none of the rats come out. Keith plays on a trombone and Sardines (an intelligent rat) emerges and dances for the crowd. Keith is proclaimed the winner, and leads the keekees out of town with the piper. After the piper leaves, the Clan rats emerge from hiding and tell the humans about the rat catchers' duplicity. The humans bargain with the rats: if the Clan will keep the keekees out of the town, the rats may stay and live as though they were just smaller humans. Keith decides to stay behind as Bad Blintz's ceremonial rat piper, while Maurice moves on to find a new scheme.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

In research: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2001 British novels, 2001 English-language novels, 2001 children's books, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents in simple terms?

Why does The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.