The Strange Chapter

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Some stories enter our lives through a library shelf. Others arrive inside a worn VHS case on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Maybe you grew up with The Secret of NIMH. Maybe Mrs. Brisby, Nicodemus, and the Great Owl left a permanent mark on your childhood—or perhaps this wonderfully strange animated world is still waiting for you.

How did you first discover NIMH?

📚 The original book 📼 The movie on VHS 📺 Television or cable 🐭 A parent, teacher, or librarian ✨ I discovered it much later 🌹 I haven’t seen or read it yet

Reply or reblog with your answer—we’d love to hear your NIMH story.

We’ll be returning to the rosebush soon on The Strange Chapter, where books, movies, animation, and history meet.

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There are movie trailers that sell you a story—and then there are trailers that unlock an entire childhood memory.

Before we explore The Secret of NIMH on The Strange Chapter, we’re revisiting the original MGM trailer for Don Bluth’s 1982 animated classic.

This is a film filled with adventure, mystery, scientific experiments, glowing amulets, terrifying owls, and some of the most beautifully atmospheric animation of the 1980s. But how did Robert C. O’Brien’s thoughtful children’s novel become such an ambitious—and surprisingly intense—animated film?

In our upcoming episode, we’ll explore the book, its real-world inspirations, the history of the production, the choices made during adaptation, and why The Secret of NIMH still resonates with audiences today.

Watch the trailer, enjoy the nostalgia, and tell us: What do you remember most about seeing NIMH for the first time?

Follow The Strange Chapter for more journeys through books, movies, animation, and the fascinating history connecting them.

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Some stories end when you close the book.

Others follow you into the dark.

Welcome to The Strange Chapter—a new show about books, films, adaptations, and the strange creative histories hiding behind the stories we remember.

We’ll be revisiting cult favorites, forgotten gems, dark animation, literary adaptations, and the movies that permanently rearranged our childhood brains.

Expect book and film reviews, adaptation comparisons, character and theme analysis, production history, animation history, and the occasional descent into creative decisions that make absolutely no sense—until they somehow do.

Why did the movie change the ending?

What disappeared between the page and the screen?

How did artists, writers, animators, and filmmakers turn an idea into something generations still carry with them?

And, most importantly:

Was the book actually better?

Our first chapter begins with Robert C. O’Brien’s Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and Don Bluth’s beautifully unsettling animated adaptation, The Secret of NIMH.

Two versions of the same story.

One quiet and scientific.

The other filled with magic, shadows, glowing eyes, and enough childhood peril to keep an entire generation slightly nervous around farm equipment.

The page is turning.

Welcome to The Strange Chapter.