The Great Mouse Plot by Roald Dahl

The Great Mouse Plot by Roald Dahl: Summary, Questions and Answers.

The Great Mouse Plot: Summary

The Great Mouse Plot is about a young Dahl (the author) and his friends who play a trick on the “loathsome” Mrs Pratchett, who runs a sweet shop in Llandaff, Cardiff. The author and his friends decide to teach Mrs Pratchett a lesson when they find a dead mouse under a floorboard at school.

Quick answers

Choose the right answers and put a tick mark against them.

a. The setting is where a story happens. Which of these sentences does not fit the setting of the story?

• i) The classroom had cemented floors.
• ii) The sweet shop was at walking distance from the school.
• iii) The school had a door that led to playground.

Answer: i

b. The action of a story is carried out by the characters. Which of the sentences is not true of the characters in the story?

• i) Mrs. Prachett was unfriendly and rude.
• ii) Thwaites distracted Mrs. Pratchett. iii) Six friends were part of ”The Great Mouse Plot”.

Answer: iii

c. The plot is the sequence of events in a story. Which of these events belongs to the plot?

• i) All the friends thought that it was a good idea to put the mouse into the jar of sweets.
• ii) The mouse was put into a jar of Bootlaces.
• iii) At the school, Mrs. Prachett could only recognize two of the culprits.

Answer: iii

d. According to you, which of these sentences best describes ”The Great Mouse Plot”?

• i) A story that could never be true.
• ii) A story that is exaggerated but could be true.

Answer: ii

Reference to Context

Q. “Why don’t we, I said, ‘Slip it into one of Mrs. Pratchett’s jars of sweets?”

a) Who made this suggestion?
Answer: The narrator of the story made this suggestion.

b) What was to be slipped into one of the jars of the sweets?
Answer: The stinky dead mouse was to be slipped into one of the jars of sweets.

c) What was the reaction of the others to this plan?
Answer: At first, the others were shocked on hearing the suggestion of the narrator. But when they knew the whole plan, they all started grinning. They slapped the narrator on his back and cheered him. They danced around the class.

Q. “The next morning, we pressed our faces against the window and looked inside.”

a) Who pressed their faces against the window?
Answer: The narrator along with his four friends, pressed their faces against the window.

b) Which window did they press their faces against?
Answer: They pressed their faces against the window of Mrs. Pratchett’s sweet shop.

c) What did they see?
Answer: They saw the glass jar of gobstoppers was smashed with the dead mouse lying in the wreckage and hundreds of multi-coloured gobstoppers littering the floor.

Read, reflect and write

Q. Who was Mrs. Pratchett? What sort of a person was she?
Mrs. Pratchett was the owner of the sweet shop near the school of the narrator. Mrs. Pratchett never smiled or greeted the students when they went to the store. Instead, she always wanted to see their money first, without which she never allowed the students to gather at her store.

Q. How do you know that the boys thought that putting the mouse in the jar of sweets was a good idea?
At first the boys were looking at the narrator with wonder. But when they came to know the whole plan, they all started grinning. They slapped the back of the narrator and cheered him. Finally they danced around the class. This shows that they thought that putting the mouse in the jar of sweets was a good idea.

Q. Contrast how the boy who narrates the story felt on the day they carried out the ‘Great Mouse Plot’ and how he felt on the day after.
On the day they carried out the ‘Great Mouse Plot’, they were very much excited and they felt like being winners. They were quite happy after executing their plan. On the next day however, when they saw the situation at the shop, they were no longer feeling like winners. The narrator became worried about Mrs. Pratchett. Then at the assembly, they became afraid and ashamed when Mrs. Pratchett identified all of them in front of the whole school.

Q. This part of the story ends on a note of suspense. What do you think happened to the boys after Mrs. Coombes took down their names? If you were Mr. Coombes, what would you do?
I think Mr. Coombes called the parents of those boys and told them about the incident. If I were Mr. Coombes, I would have scolded them and warned them not to do such things in future.

Q. If you had been there in the shop and seen the events happening, what would you have done?
If I were present at the shop at that moment, I would have stopped them from doing this. As this has made a loss of the owner of the shop and more bigger accident could have happened to Mrs. Pratchett.

Useful Links

Who inspired Roald Dahl’s Mrs Pratchett character?