Oh, Rats!: The Story of Rats and People

I really enjoyed this book it tells you all about their history and their orgins wild rats are well traveled coming to America on boats they are quite amazing little creatures they will be on this planet when we are long gone.this book would be good for teenagers and up.

C.B. Mordan's dark woodcuts are perfect to accompany OH RATS! THE STORY OF RATS AND PEOPLE. Here science, history and natural history blend to provide a spirited, lovely account of rats and their interactions with humans. Kids in grades 3-5 will find this fascinating reading.

I thought I knew a lot about rats. I did. After having read Robert Sullivan's book for adults, "Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants", I found myself under the distinct impression that Sullivan had told me everything about rats that there was to know. Imagine my shock then when, upon picking up Albert Marrin's, "Oh, Rats!: The Story of Rats and People", I discovered fact after fact after fact that I didn't know at all. Did you know that there was once a prehistoric rat that was seven feet long 17 million years ago? Or that a rat can collapse its skeleton so as to fit into tight places? Marrin doesn't just look at rats. He examines their bad and good (they have some) qualities in such a way that his book comes across as the foremost children's literature authority on the critters proper. Stir in C.B. Mordan's woodcut-like illustrations and you have yourself one heckuva book. One that will have even its adult readers alternately aghast and entranced. Rats. You know 'em. You hate 'em. But no matter what your thoughts on these large rodentia, you've never seen them like this. In scintillating detail, Albert Marrin tracks the rat/human progress and how one species has helped or hurt (usually hurt) the other over the course of our evolution. From their ancestors to how they've killed us with plague, eaten our food, or been eaten by us (yum!) we see rats in every form and face. We view them as caring family members and fast breeders. Anything and everything a kid may ever want to know about rats is here, and its hard to look away from what Marrin is displaying before our eyes (no matter how much you may want to). As to their intelligence, Marrin spares no detail. Some rats have learned to "fish" by dangling their worm-like tails in the water and then pouncing on the interested fishies. Time after time Marrin was surprising me with what he knew. Listen to this: "Sometimes able-bodied rats lead blind rats. They do this by allowing the blind rat to hold on to the tail of another or by holding one end of a stick in its mouth". I was happy to see that in the course of Marrin's rat history he included some information on lab rat testing. It's an evenhanded account, offering both sides of the debate and giving kids the chance to decide whether or not they think it's useful or uselessly cruel. The design of the book is incredibly impressive as well. First of all, you have C.B. Mordan's pictures dotting every page, so well done there. Then, at the same time, the pages are broken up in various boxes. The only colors in this book are black, white, and a deep scarlet. Scarlet boxes move from page to page offering sidenotes of equal or surpassing interest to the text itself. Sometimes the book will open up onto a full-page picture of rats balancing on telephone wires or led by a Pied Piper to their doom. And on occasion Marrin seems to run out of strictly rat-related factoids so he may, for example, complement a