A tale of a very adorable rat.

I'm not sure why but I was awfully skeptical of Tale of Despereaux when it came out on DVD. There was just so much hype about the movie and seeing as I'm personally very fond of rodents, long story short but me and my co author here at Seven Dogs.. Stacy met over a cage of rats... thats a whole other story and lifetime but let me tell you right here and now they make excellent pets. Back to the movie, needless to say I'm always a little scheptical about movies about rats and mice as for some reason it seems they never get the credit they deserve.

Though the Tale of Despereaux is still anti rat, heh, I started watching it about an hour before Connor's bedtime thinking it would be a great way for me and Connor to wind down before I put him to bed. Though he tried as hard as he could he only made it through thirty minutes of the movie, I on the other hand sat up watching it all the way to the end with a sleepy Connor curled up beside me. I absolutely loved every second of it, so much so that I sat down and watched it all over again with Connor the next day.

Despereaux is my kind of mouse, he is not at all timid, he does not follow the mouse rules when it comes to caution before adventure, and he is rather small for his size. Reminds me a bit of a little person I know, who like Desperaux thinks jumping around on the furniture will not result in broken limbs. ahem. In the end poor Desperaux is banished from the mouse world for talking to a human. At the same time in a lower level of the castle's dungeon there is a whole world of rats who are not quite as nice or as timid. All the while rats have been banned from the outside world as the Queen died by accident thanks to a rat who accidently gave her a fright while she was eating her soup. Needless to say the rat in question is a bit of an outsider himself and saves Desperaux from being eaten by the other rats when he is captured. I'm not going to go too far into the plot as I really do not want to confuse you as there are several stories going on at once between the main characters and I don't want it to sound confusing as its not, a preschooler can easily keep up. It is intresting enough that parents will get as much into the story as the little ones.

The animation on the film is really beautiful and who wouldn't fall totally in love with a tiny mouse with massively huge ears? Though there are not a huge amount of extra features there are some cute features for the kids including a map of the castle which allows kids to get a closer look into the story and characters.

I'm usually a firm beliver in read the book first then view the movie but I have to say that Tale of Desperaux is defently going on our to buy list of books for when Connor gets a little older. Actually I think it would make for a great tale to read him when he has a little more pacience and can sit still long enough to have story time before bed. Maybe we will even read it over a bowl of soup (heh, sorry had to say it.. you gotta watch the movie to understand what I'm talking about).

Tale of Despereaux is available right now on DVD and I'm serious when I say its a must have for every kids dvd collection! You can pick up your copy on Amazon!