I haven't read any "Rescuers" books for years. Actually, I forgot about them for a while. But happily, we are now reunited! This book is very different from the Disney film of the same name which is hardly surprising. In a nutshell, the plot is Bernard, Bianca and Norwegian mouse, Nils must rescue a Norwegian poet who is prisoner in The Black Castle. *dun dun DUN* But what made me laugh was, when they finally rescue the poet he does not find it strange in the least that three mice have come to rescue him because "...he was a poet. It is the gift of all poets to find the commonplace astonishing, and the astonishing quite natural." And the author said this later at least one more time to show the difference between the poet and a typical prisoner. "He was a poet so therefore..." That made me laugh.

I had forgotten how much I love rotund, big-hearted Bernard. If I had ever had more than one male pet mouse I would have named him Bernard. (The only male mouse we ever had was a mistake. Ha... ha. But, that's another story. We did, on the other hand, name a mouse after Bianca!)