As they set off to look in the rat-catchers' house, the rats discover many rat tunnels, which are empty, save for traps and poison. The two groups meet in the rat catchers' den, where they have been storing the food the rats are thought to have eaten, and find cages where the rats are being bred, for coursing. Maurice asks Malicia about the fairy tales, "stories about little people with wings that go tinkle-tinkle?" a reference to Tinkerbell in James Barrie's novel Peter Pan.

Waif Prophet: Dangerous Beans. Maurice inwardly notes that he's the closest thing the Clan has to a wizard. Darktan, the rats' trap expert, leads a group to rescue Hamnpork, and succeeds after nearly dying in a trap. Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Maurice swears he will never eat prey that can talk, and everyone reassures him they know he won't, but knows he learned to speak by eating one of the intelligent rats (who had a speech impediment). But Bad Blintz is different. This is a town that REALLY HATES RATS! There are full-time Rat Catchers paying 50 cents a tail and traps and poisons and a mysterious voice that gets inside your head and Malicia, a book-loving girl who won't stop talking.But somehow this one passed me by. I think it's because it's a stand-alone within the Discworld universe, and those have never been my favourites. Also, I'm not yet sold on the young-adult Discworld books. Before The Amazing Maurice I'd only read The Wee Free Men and I wasn't convinced, so I felt little urgency to grab a copy.

Maurice pounces on the Death of Rats to protect Dangerous Beans, then stands there with the Grim Squeaker in his mouth, stunned by the realization of how much trouble he's bound to be in for...It's an A-list voice cast saddled with a screenplay that’s just not up to their skill set. “The Amazing Maurice” is also another computer-animated film that never gets visually ambitious enough. Oh, it threatens to do so, with village streets that promise adventure down every alley, but the world-building here is surprisingly weak given the source material and the potential of the story to get weird. It’s almost as if the producers knew they had a bizarre book to adapt but never really embraced the quirkiness of this riff on the Pied Piper. Some of the rats are delightfully bizarre, but the character design is never as adventurous as it should be. Funny Animal: A deconstruction. Being able to talk doesn't make the rats that much like humans; they can't wear waistcoats, they instinctively eat their dead, mark things by widdling on them, and practically everything in the world is out to get them. One of my all-time favorite books along with Pratchett's Thief of Time, Nation, and his outstanding Tiffany Aching series beginning with The Wee Free Men. Which turned out to be Mr Vogel the town clerk and Mrs Schuman the shoemaker’s wife, who happened to be there merely because of their shared interest in studying the habits of barn owls …’ 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 28th novel in the Discworld series and the first written for children.

A movie, available in theaters and streaming on Hulu, directed by Toby Genkel (and starring Hugh Laurie, Emilia Clarke among others) and called "The Amazing Maurice", was released 5 February 2023 in the USA and Canada. As the rats move into the town's underground, they discover an overwhelmingly large number of rat traps, but no live keekees (rats who can't talk or think). At the end of the novel, Maurice leaves his rodents behind and finds a child to whom he asks "Hey, stupid looking kid. You wanna be lord mayor? No, down here kid" and goes off to start a new adventure. AWN Staff (13 June 2019). "Sir Terry Pratchett's 'Amazing Maurice' Being Turned into Animated Feature". Animation World Network. Archived from the original on 12 June 2019 . Retrieved 7 November 2020.

The fairy tale, The Seventh Wife of Greeenbeard is a reference to the story of Bluebeard, also by Charles Perrault and called The Robber Bridegroom in the Grimms Fairy Tales or Mr. Fox written by Norman Partridge,