Adventures in Fosterland 2 – Super Spinach

Hannah Shaw's Super Spinach is a warm, funny chapter book for 5 year olds about a poorly shelter kitten who's convinced she's become a superhero.

What happens

Spinach is a tiny silver tabby who can't play. She was born with a small, oddly shaped rib cage, so even walking to her water bowl makes her wheeze. She sits in her own kennel at the animal shelter and watches the kittens opposite have all the fun.

When they get blue cards clipped to their kennel, it means a trip to the adoption floor. Spinach gets a white card. That means the vet.

There's an operation, gently told, with a mask and a long sleep. When she wakes up she can take a really deep breath for the first time in her life. There's a hard shield on her chest. And a scruffy old clinic cat called Dr Tomcat tells her she must be some kind of superhero to have come through that.

Spinach believes him completely.

From then on it's very funny, because Spinach sees superpowers everywhere. The pet carrier is her cat-mobile. The foster carer who feeds her is her purrsonal assistant. When the carer cuts up a polka-dot sock to keep the chest shield in place, that's her super-suit! And a one-eyed white cat called Eloise must be the headmistress of a hero academy.

Young readers will know what's really going on long before Spinach does, and that's a big part of the fun. It's also a lovely way to see a vet visit and a foster home through an animal's eyes.

If your reader has ever been nervous about a doctor's appointment or a hospital stay, Spinach's worries might feel familiar. She's frightened, and then she's brave, and the book never makes a big scary thing of it.

It's a kind, hopeful story about a small creature who's been left on the sidelines finally getting to join in. Who doesn't love an underdog (or an under-kitten)?

What to read next

The first Fosterland book, Emmett and Jez, follows a lost baby piglet who ends up in the same kind of foster home and starts to wonder whether he might be a kitten after all.