All the way across the big pond I have come into passion of a Ninja Turtle gem. I got as a present from my mother, a copy in great shape of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles : Enter – The Rat King. This is a children’s book published in 1990 by Carnival and printed in Great Britain. The book is only 31 pages and for the most part re-tells a story from the cartoon series of the same name. In the United States the series is known as The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so finding something named other than that staple is a true blessing for me.
It appears there were at least 4 books in the series with the same style. It was hard to find much more information about this series as of this posting. The book had a retail price of 1.75 pounds as well. The story takes place when April’s boss gets attacked by a group of wild rats. April must investigate the story of the rats and find out why the rats in the city are overwhelming the people. In comes The Rat King, a clouded man who can control the rats with a magic flute. When The Rat King hears Aprils news report he kidnaps here and then it is up to the turtles to save her.
The writing style is a bid childish but at times they use some pretty big words. It is fun to see how the material has been translated for the European audience. Seeing the word tire spelled out as tyre is just plain fun. Other fun bits are calling dishes crockery, and they use sheepishly to describe how Donatello talks is just hilarious to read.
There are some illustrations in this book as well as text. They choose some weird scenes to depict in the drawings. As you can see April’s face does not look quite right, she looks so angry. In this shot it looks like they forgot to finish drawing Mike’s eye(the one in orange). The artwork is really some of the worst looking renderings of the turtles I have seen published professionally. If you overlook the art you get a simple story with some funny words to read and a nice collection to my growing Ninja Turtles items. Maybe I am just saying that because I got it for free but then again, TURTLE POWER!
Super Dash Rendar
