Dead Sea Squirrels 04 – Squirrelnapped

Mike Nawrocki's Squirrelnapped is a funny, fast-moving adventure for 6 year olds about a boy, two very old squirrels and one broken elephant.

What happens

Michael has a big secret. Merle and Pearl are 2,000-year-old talking squirrels, and he smuggled them home to Tennessee from the Dead Sea. Now his mum knows too. His dad doesn't. Yet.

Then Michael plays football in the living room (which he isn't allowed to do) and knocks over his mum's precious elephant table. He glues it back together. Sort of. When his little sister Jane puts a cupcake on it, the whole thing collapses and she gets the blame. Michael keeps very quiet.

Pearl is not impressed. She reminds him about the apostle Paul, who wrote from jail about telling each other the truth. Not telling the whole story, she says, is a kind of lying too.

At the park things go wrong in a different way. Pearl follows a suspiciously neat line of acorns into a hedge and straight into a trap. A man in a suit and sunglasses drives off with her in the boot of his car! Luckily Michael's friend Sadie remembers the number plate.

After that it's a proper rescue, with a hotel, a cleaning trolley and a very yappy Chihuahua. Merle gets to be the hero. And yes, Michael does own up in the end.

The chapters are short and the jokes come thick and fast. Merle gets excited about everything, from football to "lemon-made". Pearl is the sensible one. Which one would your reader rather be?

It's good to know that the story carries a Christian message. The Bible story comes up as something the squirrels remember, and the book is very clear about its lesson on honesty. For some families that will be exactly what they're looking for. Others will just enjoy the squirrels!

What to read next

This is the fourth book, so it's more fun if you start at the beginning. That's Squirreled Away, where Michael and his best friend Justin get lost in a cave near the Dead Sea and spot something odd on a ledge.