As the daughter of two writers, Jane Leslie Conly has had no shortage of models for her own literary career. Her mother was a writer and editor, while her father was a staff member of National Geographic who wrote under the pen name Robert C. O'Brien; he won the Newbery Medal in 1972 for his children's classic Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Not only did Conly assist him with his final novel, Z for Zachariah, but she based her first books on characters and situations from her father's most popular novel. In Racso and the Rats of NIMH and R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH, Conly continues the story of the super-intelligent rats whose escape from the city and establishment of a farm at Thorn Valley was at the core of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. "Conly appeals to a young adult audience through...