Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.
O'BRIEN, Robert C. [Robert Leslie Conly].
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.
“By teaching us how to read, they had taught us how to get away”: First Edition of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh; Inscribed by Newbery Medal-Winning Author Robert C. O'Brien
New York: Atheneum, 1971.
$9,500.00
In Stock
Item Number: 151840
First edition of this Newbery Medal-winning children’s fantasy novel. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth with titles and a small mouse stamped in purple, title page vignette, illustrated throughout. Presentation copy, warmly inscribed by the author on the half-title page, “To Sue Glazer with gratitude respect and affection Robert C. O’Brien.” Fine in a near fine dust jacket without the Newbery medal sticker to the front panel. Illustrated by Zena Bernstein. First editions are rare, signed and inscribed examples particularly so.
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is the most celebrated work of Robert C. O'Brien, the pen name of Robert Leslie Conly (1918–1973), a Brooklyn-born writer and editor who spent the latter decades of his career at National Geographic It stands as one of the landmark works of twentieth-century American children's literature. The novel follows Mrs. Frisby, a widowed field mouse whose youngest son Timothy lies gravely ill with pneumonia just as spring plowing threatens to destroy their home, and who is drawn into an unlikely alliance with a colony of extraordinarily intelligent rats who have escaped from a government laboratory known as NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) where scientific experimentation had enhanced their intelligence to a level surpassing that of their human captors, enabling them to read, write, and build a complex subterranean civilization of their own. Critics noted that the book successfully melds two seemingly incompatible narrative modes: animals with human names in recognizably human situations, and a study of wildlife that is accurately and carefully presented. It went on to win the Newbery Medal, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was runner-up for the National Book Award in 1972, followed by the Mark Twain Award in 1973, the Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Readers' Choice Award, and the William Allen White Children's Book Award. In 2012 it was ranked number 33 on School Library Journal's list of the top 100 children's novels. A beloved 1982 animated film adaptation, The Secret of NIMH, directed by Don Bluth, introduced the story to a new generation of readers, and the novel has remained continuously in print for more than five decades; a testament to the enduring power of O'Brien's quietly extraordinary imagination.
