Top 10 rodents in children's fiction

From Scabbers to Angelina Ballerina, Ratty to Squirrel Nutkin, rodents of all shapes and sizes have a starring role in a surprising number of children’s books. Ross Welford, author of Time Travelling With A Hamster, picks his favourites

Children often ask me why I choose a hamster to be Al’s companion in my book Time Travelling With A Hamster.

In truth, Alan Shearer the hamster started life as a dog. But the narrative difficulties of hauling a dog through spacetime in a tin-tub time-machine soon became apparent: Al needed a pet that he could easily take with him. Besides, apart from there having been loads of boy-and-dog stories, who doesn’t love a hamster? Here are my top ten rodents in children’s fiction.

1. Scabbers the rat in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books

I’m nervous writing anything about Harry Potter because my knowledge of this genius canon is a piecemeal agglomeration of reading aloud to my children, reading silently to myself, watching the films and simple absorption - so forgive me if I get this wrong. Scabbers belongs to Harry’s pal Ron Weasley, but turns out to be the animal form of the wizard Peter Pettigrew, formerly a friend of Harry’s dad James, whom he betrays. He takes the form of a rat when he becomes a spy for the evil Lord Voldemort. (There’s much more to it, obviously – but is that about right?) Scabbers occupies the number one slot on the grounds of sheer popularity. I’ll bet more children will know Scabbers than the remaining nine rodents combined, which are in no particular order.

2. Armitage the rat in Ratburger by David Walliams

David Walliams’s books are a glorious riot of childish vulgarity underpinned with genuine heart, and Ratburger is my favourite. When young Zoe is forced by her ghastly stepmother to give up her pet rat, Armitage, for adoption, she’s horrified to discover that he is destined to be burger meat. With nods to the black humour of Roald Dahl, Walliams weaves a deft tale in which Armitage is central to the eventual happy ending. And no [spoiler alert!] - Armitage doesn’t end up as a burger.

3. Squirrel Nutkin in Beatrix Potter’s The Tale Of Peter Rabbit

Erm... can we just do all of Beatrix Potter’s twee clothes-wearing rodents in one, please? Samuel Whiskers, Timmy Tiptoes, the Flopsy Bunnies, Mrs Tittlemouse... Their appeal was lost on me even as a young child and eludes me to this day despite their enduring popularity. I include these because of the illustrations, by Potter herself, which are gorgeous.

Which Beatrix Potter character are you?

4. Stuart Little by EB White

If you’re going to do talking mice in clothes, why not go the whole hog and have one with human parents? Such is the charm of EB White’s 1945 classic that the sheer strangeness of the concept soon becomes irrelevant. The rest of the human cast take a humanised rodent in their stride as well, and Stuart Little gets to drive a car (a small one, obviously) and even has a diminutive human girlfriend. Sounds ridiculous, is ridiculous – but it’s funny, heart-warming and exciting all the same.

5. Mr and Mrs Beaver in CS Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia

Well, they’re not really Mr and Mrs Beaver any more, are they? They are Ray Winstone and Dawn French in the best bit of casting in the whole of the 2005 film. I like to think that old “Jack” Lewis would have thoroughly approved (although he was, apparently, a huge fan of Beatrix Potter).

6. Ratty in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind In The Willows

All right, Ratty is a water vole (sometimes called a water rat) and thus, strictly speaking, not actually a rodent, but I’ll bet you were expecting him to be on this list and I aim to please. Friendly, laconic and cultured, Ratty has the best quote in the book: “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” (Well, that and Toad’s “poop poop!” which makes children laugh uproariously.)

7. Angelina Ballerina by Katherine Holabird and Helen Craig

For an indication of the ballet-dancing mouse’s popularity, check Google: the first result asks you to choose your country and then takes you to the website for HIT Entertainment, the kids’ TV behemoth. The books, though, started modestly enough in 1983, written by US-born Holabird and illustrated by Helen Craig, an Englishwoman who gave the books their olde-English charm. Angelina herself is kind, dedicated, loyal, helpful, sincere, polite and - despite all that – hugely likeable.

8. Dormouse in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland

Sleepy old Dormouse doesn’t actually get to do much, yawning his way through the Hatter’s tea-party, telling a strange story and then falling asleep again, basically. I loved this book when I first read it as an adult. I then read it to my children who found it altogether too weird, like I’d spiked their bedtime milk with something.

9. Fiver in Richard Adams’s Watership Down

Rabbits were rodents until 1912 when some fussy biologists moved them into a new order, so Fiver’s in, OK? I think he’s the best rabbit in fiction. Kind, generous but riddled with self-doubt, Fiver is blessed (cursed?) with the power of clairvoyance and forsees the trouble that’s coming to the Sandleford Warren. Adams’s gift is to anthropomorphise the rabbits without any of the tweeness that blights (ahem) certain other animal authors, resulting in a magical story that is a joy at any age.

10. The mouse in The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

“A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood/A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good/”Where are you going to, little brown mouse?/Come and have tea in my underground house.” I didn’t even have to look that up, honest. Several years of nightly recitation will do that to you. Children – in my experience – take a long time to tire of this story of the crafty little mouse who outwits the other creatures in the wood.

And finally, some “honourable mentions”. There’s Maisie the Mouse in the super-cute picture books by Lucy Cousins; The World According to Humphrey, a hamster created by Betty G Birney; The Tale of Despereaux (yet another mouse) by Kate DiCamillo, and Porcupine by Meg Tilly, which I haven’t read but I include simply because I didn’t know porcupines were rodents.

Ross Welford is the author of Time Travelling With a Hamster, a funny race-against-time – and across generations – adventure. Buy it at the Guardian bookshop.

• Children's books
• Children and teenagers
• Children's books: 7 and under
• Children's books: 8-12 years
• Teen books
• Picture books
• Harry Potter

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