Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Author: Robert C. O'Brien

First line: Mrs. Frisby, the head of a family of field mice, lived in an underground house in the vegetable garden of a farmer named Mr. Fitzgibbon.

Why you should read this book: In the tale of a mother determined to save the life of her child is a story that, on the surface, talks of friendship, dedication, and persistence, but underneath presents a treatise on how on why self-sufficiency should form the cornerstone of an enlightened society. In her efforts to help her sickly son, Mrs. Frisby makes an unusual assortment of friends and eventually learns that her late husband was one of twenty-two experimental animals who escaped from a lab where they had been given injections to make them hundreds of times smarter than ordinary animals. From the mundane circumstances of a common field mouse's existence to the remarkably fantastic civilization created by super-intelligent rats, this award-winning story draws the reader in to world just as real and believable as our own.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're laying down poison to keep those rats in your rosebush out of the grain silos.