The text included great vocabulary and turn of phrase. I found the illustrations to be a bit on the scary side, not what I expected from the other Mercer Mayer illustrations I've seen. ( )

Mercer Mayer retells and illustrated this classic fairytale with his usual aplomb, giving characters a meaningful representation and portraying events of the story wonderfully. I particularly enjoyed his focus on the rats - who take on true evil personalities in his story and his images. ( )

I've read this prior to reading Homer Price by Robert McCloskey. His short story, Nothing New Under the Sun, is a modern version of Pied Piper. I love Mercer Mayer's illustrations and his version of the story makes for a great read aloud! ( )

The town of Hamelin is filled with rats, the rats whisper so the people cant concentrate. The king doesnt do anyting about it because all he does is eat. Pied Piper comes to town and says to the mayor if you pay me 50000 pieces of the kings silver i will get the rats out. So he plays his instrument and all the rats follow him to the bay and they all drowned. then the mayor refuses to pay him. So he decides to play his instrument and all the children in the town follow him and he locks then into a mountain. But the children have fun in there and like it better than being with there parents.

I enjoyed this book because i liked the plot and all the illistrutations in it. I thought it was a good but to read to young children.

I would read this book to my class. And have them summarize this book to me and what the moral of the story was.

In this book, a town is infested with rats and the king will not do anything about them because the rats are not affecting him. All the king does is eat all the time and he does not worry about anything else. The Pied Piper comes to town one day and plays his flute while he is walking out of town and all the rats are following him. Since he did that, he demanded some money but the mayor would not give him the money so heplayed his flute again as he was walking out of town and all the children of the townspeople followed him. He put the children in a mountain and shut it, and they lived their the rest of their lives but they were happier in the magical mountain than they were with their parents. One extension I can think of, is to have the children make up their own story and at the end, find other things that the pied piper can have the children live in, like a magical castle, or in space. I would like to see all the ideas they come up with.