Calendar Mysteries – February Friend

Ron Roy's February Friend is a Valentine's Day mystery for 5 year olds about a rabbit that nobody expected to find in the classroom cupboard.

What happens

It's the second Calendar Mysteries book. The first graders in Mr Vooray's class are handing out valentines when one card turns up with no name on it. Inside, it just tells them to look in the cupboard.

What's in there? A rabbit called Douglas, in a cage, with a note asking the class to give him a good home. It's signed "a friend" and nothing else.

Bradley and his twin Brian take Douglas home for the long weekend. Then things get worrying. Douglas won't eat, won't drink and won't even twitch his nose.

The vet says he's a very healthy rabbit. He just misses his owner. And if he doesn't start eating soon he could get very poorly. So Bradley, Brian and their friends Nate and Lucy need to find out who left him, and fast.

Their clues are three photos tucked under the newspaper in his cage, a towel with a letter on it and a scar on somebody's little finger. Bradley gets out a magnifying glass. There's a rowing boat, a hedge and a church steeple hiding in those pictures. It's proper detective work for little ones, and your reader gets to look at every clue alongside the kids.

It's a super gentle town to be in, too. The pet shop owner, the man at the bait shop and Ellie at the diner all stop what they're doing to help (Ellie even hands round her leftover cookies).

If your reader is a big animal lover, there's a worried stretch in the middle where Douglas just sits in the corner of his cage. Bradley even sleeps on the floor next to him. It's sad rather than scary, and it'll have animal-mad kids rooting for Douglas all the way.

The chapters are short and the sentences are simple, so it's a lovely one for a child who's just moved on to chapter books. And who doesn't love a mystery that starts with a secret valentine?

What to read next

If they'd like to go back to where these four friends' year of mysteries begins, January Joker opens on a snowy night with a strange light in the back garden and two creatures that look like broccoli spears hopping about by the barn.