The Great Ringtail Garbage Caper

Timothy Foote's The Great Ringtail Garbage Caper is a funny heist story for 9 year olds about a gang of raccoons who steal a garbage truck.

What happens

The raccoons of Up Island have had it good for years. Summer visitors leave the richest rubbish you can imagine (lobster bits in butter, chunks of quiche). But now two young garbage collectors have arrived and they do their job far too well. The bins are empty every morning and the raccoon kits are going hungry.

So there's an emergency meeting in the church basement. Some of the grown-up raccoons want revenge. But the wise Oldest Coon has a much cleverer plan, and he picks a team of eleven experts to carry it out. The twelfth member has to win his place.

That's where Joshua comes in. He's the smallest nine-year-old raccoon on the island and the other kits never pick him for games. But he can run a wobbly pole, untie knots and open a lock with his eyes shut. Guess who ends up creeping into the boys' cabin in the dark on the most important job of all?

The heist itself is brilliant fun. Picture raccoons standing on each other's shoulders to reach the steering wheel, hauling on ropes to turn it and leaning on the brake together! One of them even wears a straw hat as a disguise.

It feels like an old-fashioned story, with a narrator who chats to you and puts in little comments of his own. The humans get gently teased as well. Nobody on the island believes anyone who says they've seen a raccoon driving.

A couple of things are worth checking first. Some of the grown-up humans are drunk (it's played for laughs) and at the big victory feast "a number of raccoons got very drunk" too. There's the odd "damned" and "dammit". And Joshua admits he'd practised with matches when his parents weren't looking (the narrator does say sorry about that).

For most 9 year olds none of this will matter much. If yours is a keen reader who likes clever animals running rings round people, they'll love cheering the raccoons on.

What to read next

For another bunch of hungry animals outwitting the humans, Fantastic Mr Fox is the obvious next read. Mr Fox has three horrible farmers to beat, and a family to feed.