Dude! Teenage Mutant Ninja Rodents Unite to Save the Day in Ragweed

"A mouse has to do what a mouse has to do." That's the catch-phrase of rebellious mouse Ragweed in Avi's series of Tales From Dimwood Forest. In Ragweed, fans of the series are treated to a whole book full of Ragweed doing what he has to do, though the proper course of action is often more complicated to determine than the four-month-old upstart imagines when he leaves home to see the world.

Though Ragweed is known for his rash actions and unconventional style, when we meet him he is mostly timid and polite, a well-mannered yokel trying to adjust to city ways after a trip on a train lands him in Amperville, where mice live in constant fear of Silversides, a mean-spirited, well-to-do white housecat, and Graybar, a grungy tomcat. The first mouse Ragweed meets is Clutch, a green-haired, purple earring-wearing, street-smart guitarist who saves him from the feline welcoming committee by yanking him into her hole in the nick of time. Though initially in sensory overload and hopelessly confused, Ragweed quickly absorbs the culture, learning the strange speech patterns of Clutch and her friends and devising a plan to free them from the cats' reign of terror.

Several secondary characters are introduced throughout the book, including Clutch's father Windshield, who dreams of a revolution but does nothing to help it along except to paint abstract propaganda; her mother Foglight, a perpetually revising poet who is utterly detached from the world around her; and her bandmates Dipstik and Lugnut. Most significant, though, is Blinker, an albino mouse bred in a laboratory who has lived most of his life as the special pet of the girl who owns Silversides, fueling the cat's resentment. When Blinker breaks free of the confines of his home, he finds the outside world invigorating but terrifying. Gratified to befriend Clutch and Ragweed, he hopes he can help them turn the tables on the cats once and for all.

Ragweed is a fast-paced, 27-chapter adventure with a strikingly different feel to it from other Dimwood Forest tales, since the bulk of it takes place in the city. In this urban setting, Ragweed develops into a valiant young mouse, facing challenges foreign to his family back at the Brook while dealing with his first potential romance, which rapidly becomes a love triangle.

If I have one complaint about the book, it's that the vernacular used by Clutch and her fellow young city mice is over-done. Its primary purpose is to help make these mice distinct from the forest dwellers to which we've become accustomed and to show us Ragweed's transformation. However, readers are inundated with slang, half of which sounds a decade out of date even for its 1999 publication.

Even that aspect has entertainment value, though, so the overall result is another engaging animal adventure from master storyteller Avi, with complementary illustrations by Brian Floca. You won't catch me ragging on Ragweed!