First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons and Co Ltd in 1959
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016
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Text copyright © Margery Sharp 1959
Why You’ll Love This Book copyright © Anne Fine 2010
Cover illustration © Emilia Dziubak 2016
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, 2016
Margery Sharp asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007364091
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780007390700
Version: 2016-05-20
CONTENTS
Why You’ll Love This Book – by Anne Fine
Chapter Five – Marching Orders
Chapter Six – The Happy Journey
Chapter Seven – The Black Castle
Chapter Eleven – The Other Way Out
Chapter Twelve – The Great Enterprise
If there’s a more enchanting story than The Rescuers, I’ve yet to read it. For fifty years now it’s been delighting children – along with any adult wise enough to snatch the chance to share it.
Yet it’s as fresh today as it has ever been. How could readers fail to warm to a book so full of comedy and heart? We meet three of the most heroic mice in literature: delicate Miss Bianca, who selflessly abandons her pampered life in a porcelain pagoda to journey over rough seas and barren lands to the hideous Black Castle from which no prisoner has ever escaped.
Along with her on this terrifying errand of mercy go two steadfast companions: kind, loyal Bernard from the kitchen pantry (already honoured for Gallantry in the Face of Cats); and Nils, a fearless Norwegian sailor who’s never happier than when braving storm-tossed waves in his sturdy sea boots.
How these resourceful mice set about their adventure is a wonder. For though Miss Bianca means well, she is unable to confess that Nils has taken her idle doodle of a garden party hat for an accurate map of the waterways they must traverse. (Luckily, Miss Bianca’s refined manners and sprightly grace serve her better in her encounters with the head jailor’s cat, the fierce, yet somewhat dim, Mamelouk.)
This is a book which, once discovered, is read over and over. Each detail enchants and fascinates: the deliciously comfortable walnut-shell chairs in the committee room of the mice’s Prisoners’ Aid Society; the desperate message from the dungeons, cunningly stuck with black treacle to Mamelouk’s fur; even the flowery poems that Miss Bianca feels compelled to write at moments of high emotion.
Right from the start, The Rescuers was hailed as a classic. Since then, Margery Sharp’s short masterpiece has enthralled, amused and enriched the reading lives of young people everywhere.
Don’t miss it!
Anne Fine
Anne Fine has won a host of literary prizes both here and abroad, and from 2001–3 she was the Children’s Laureate.