All Rights Reserved.The Rescuers Down Under External links IMDb page When the gaunt prisoner meets his polite and well-dressed rescuers, he is more delighted than surprised for, as the author observes: "It is the gift of all poets to find the commonplace astonishing, and the astonishing quite natural."Ĭopyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Once in the castle they must outwit a terrible cat, Mamelouk "the Iron-tummed," and get hold of a key to the poet's cell. "Perhaps he writes free verse," comes the arch reply.) It is not long before three dauntless characters are making their way to the prison: brave, Norwegian-speaking Nils resourceful English-speaking Bernard and the refined Miss Bianca, whose principal weapon is her devastating charm. ("If he's a poet, why is he in jail?" one of the mice wonders. "What is less well known is how splendidly they are organized." Normally the creatures seek to cheer convicts by keeping them company and sharing their crumbs, but this time the object is something riskier and more exciting: to travel to the remote and dreadful Black Castle and free an imprisoned Norwegian poet. The tale opens with a meeting of the Prisoner's Aid Society, which is, naturally, composed of mice: "Everyone knows that mice are the prisoner's friends," Ms.
Sharp's original work is much funnier and more interestingly textured than the high-fructose movie version. For another, this new incarnation (149 pages, $14.95) provides an excuse to rescue the story for a generation of children who might otherwise know only the animated 1977 Disney movie of the same name.
For one thing, it has just been reissued in handsome hardback as part of the New York Review Children's Collection, with drawings by Garth Williams. Margery Sharp's mouse-centric 1959 adventure, "The Rescuers," has only been out of print for a decade, but it is well worth revisiting. Schindler from 'Hornbooks and Inkwells.' ILLUSTRATION: S.D.
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