The Naughty Kitten

Paula Harrison's The Naughty Kitten is a giggly palace story for 6 year olds about a princess who rescues a tiny kitten and then has to keep him hidden from almost everyone.

What happens

Bea is nine and completely animal-mad. Her dad, King George, has the same answer every time she asks for a pet. Pets and palaces just don't mix.

So Bea looks after animals in secret. There's Fluff the mouse in a cardboard box under her bed and Crinkly the spider, saved just before the housekeeper's broom got him.

Then, at the town's kite festival, her mouse-shaped kite blows into a tree. Bea climbs up after it and finds a little ginger kitten clinging to a branch in the wind. Nobody in the park knows who he belongs to. So she pops him in the picnic basket and carries him home (humming loudly whenever he mews).

She calls him Tiger. He climbs EVERYTHING. Curtains, wardrobes, bookcases, and every single time he gets to the top he realises he has no idea how to get down.

The best bits are the near misses. Tiger hides inside the king's wellington boot, and it starts doing a little jig across the hall just as Mrs Stickler, the very strict housekeeper, turns round. Bea's only plan is to shriek "DUST!" and point at a cabinet. It works, just about.

Bea's dad gives her one day to find Tiger's owner before he gets back. Her little brother Alfie keeps nearly giving the game away. Her big sister Natasha is bossy but has her moments. And there's a man in a grey jacket who keeps turning up in the palace garden when he really shouldn't be.

It's worth knowing that Bea's mum died of a fever when Alfie was tiny. It's one line near the start, part of explaining the family, and the story moves straight on.

The chapters are short and there's always something happening, which makes it a lovely one for a newly confident reader. Who wouldn't want to smuggle a kitten upstairs in a picnic basket?

What to read next

If it's the hiding they love, try The Storm Dragon, another Paula Harrison story. Sophy is a maid at a castle, and when a baby dragon with a hurt wing crash-lands in the orchard, she has to hide him before the knights find him.