Permutation City Blog

A lovely book for children and adults. It is a typical tale of peril and heroics to overcome adversity, admittedly in canine form. Characters are wonderful both the human pets and their doggy owners. The way all the dogs work together to help hide and feeds the dogs as they travel is nice as it all goes on out of site of the human world (except for little Tommy.)

I remember this book from my childhood, right down to the picture of a penny-farthing on the front cover. An absent minded professor invents devices their either almost, but not quite, perform their intended function. As a kid this was great and would still work for them today. As an adult the stories are very predictable. I'm still glad to have a copy just for the memories.

If you've read the original book you'll enjoy following the character a little bit further. Assuming that intelligent dogs are normal this book has a lot more fantasy and the dogs learn how to fly by the end of it. All in all this book has less to offer than the original, fun but not much more than that.

This was a wonderful story in my childhood and it's still a wonderful story now. A mother mouse fighting to protect her sick child and dealing with the mysterious rats of NIMH. There are a lot of nice characters: the mother, her friend the crow, the wise owl, and the rats themselves. It has some good child-friendly tension balanced with small victories along the way.