The Battle of Bubble and Squeak

Philippa Pearce's The Battle of Bubble and Squeak is a family story for 8 year olds about two gerbils, a boy who loves them, and a mother who will not have animals in her house.

What happens

Three in the morning, and something in the house goes creak. Then creak. Then creak.

Bill Sparrow is sent down to investigate. There's no poker upstairs, so he arms himself with his wife's heavy pot of cold cream, which tells you most of what you need to know about Bill.

In the larder he finds his stepson Sid on the floor, whispering please hush, please hush at a cage. Inside it, two small creatures have frozen solid. One was running a treadmill. The other was gnawing at a bar.

Rats, says Mrs Sparrow from the doorway. Gerbils, says Sid. And the row begins.

What makes this so good is that Pearce refuses to make anybody the villain. Mrs Sparrow is up at three in the morning. She has a job to get to. She will be the one sweeping up the bedding that comes through the bars. She has never liked animals and she says so, and she isn't pretending otherwise to please anyone. What are you meant to do when the one thing your children love is the one thing you can't bear?

So the gerbils are sent back. Except the pet department won't take them, even free, and by teatime they're back on the living room table with four children leaning over them.

There's a scene later where Sid lies on the floor and his sisters post the gerbils into his sleeves and trouser legs until he's helpless with giggling. Everybody is laughing softly. And their mother is standing in the doorway watching, and not one of them notices her there.

This is the quietest book you'll find and it still has a horrible morning in it. Mrs Sparrow puts the cage out with the dustbins, and little Amy opens the door in time to see the back of the lorry and its great jaws closing and opening. She screams. That night she has a nightmare about blood coming through the bars, and afterwards Sid tells Peggy he doesn't think their mum quite knew what she meant to happen.

Nobody is hurt. But the fear is real and it lasts a couple of chapters, and there's a moment early on, alone in the empty house, where Sid says out loud that he wishes it would fall down and kill him.

What to read next

If your reader likes an animal at the centre of a very English, very quiet story, try The Little Gentleman. Bet is asked to sit in a meadow and read aloud to nobody at all, and discovers that her audience is a mole who talks, and who is over three hundred years old.