Museum Kittens 03 – The Sleepover Mystery

Holly Webb's The Sleepover Mystery is a cosy Museum Kittens story for 6 year olds where sixty schoolchildren camp out under the dinosaurs and one kitten goes missing.

What happens

The four museum kittens have their own guard shifts now. They're all short on sleep, which makes them grumpy. Boris and Bianca can't even agree whose turn it is to guard the China and Glass Room (Boris thinks it's the boringest room in the whole museum).

The squabble turns into a proper catfight. Boris ends up in the courtyard fountain with a goldfish on his head! Then Bianca panics, scrambles up a precious silk ballgown and rips it to shreds.

Ma is NOT impressed. There are no more guard shifts for now. Bianca stops speaking to the others and spends the next day trailing after the visiting schoolchildren instead, being told how sweet she is.

And the rats are watching. They've just had a very disappointing night in a grand old dolls' house, where Pip, the littlest rat, bit into a lovely pink cake. It was made of plaster. (So was the fish.) Now they've spotted a little white kitten who's all on her own...

When Bianca doesn't come back to the cellars, Tasha can't sleep. So the other three kittens creep out to search the museum in the dark. Along the way they catch two children trying to climb into a stone sarcophagus, and Boris's eerie howl turns out to be very useful. Who knew he could sound so much like a ghost?

The best thing about this one is Bianca. She's vain and snappy, but you get to see inside her head when she's alone. She's started to wonder whether she's even meant to be a museum cat. Then a rat frightens a little girl called Anya and Bianca is on guard in a flash.

There's lots of funny back and forth between the kittens too. Boris winding Bianca up on purpose (while pretending to be asleep) is a highlight.

If your reader has ever fallen out with a brother or sister and then had no idea how to make up, they'll probably recognise Bianca's sulk straight away. It's a gentle story about pride and squabbles, set in a museum at night with dinosaur skeletons and mummies all around.

What to read next

All four kittens start out in The Midnight Visitor, so that's a great one to go back to. It's where Peter first turns up and Tasha decides that what he really needs is to catch a rat.