The Twitchers 2 – Spark

M. G. Leonard's Spark is a wildlife mystery for 9 year olds, and this time the detective in the middle of it is Jack.

What happens

Jack is walking into Aves Wood when he hears a scream that makes every hair on his body stand up. He's half expecting zombies. It's a ginger cat, hiding in the ferns with blood on its fur and a back leg hanging all wrong.

He scoops it up in his hoodie (getting badly scratched in the process) and runs all the way to the vet. The cat is called Colonel Mustard, and it's been shot. It's the third cat in Briddvale that week.

Jack is thrilled. A proper case for the Twitchers! Except nobody else seems very interested.

That's because a bearded vulture is on its way. It's a very rare bird that eats bones, and Twitch is so excited he can barely see straight. Jack has only been birdwatching for a couple of months. He still can't tell a chaffinch from a tree sparrow, and he hasn't found his spark bird (the one that makes you a birdwatcher for life).

So Jack, Ava and Terry quietly start investigating on their own. Their first surprise is who comes asking for help. It's Pamela Hardacre, the meanest girl in school, sitting by the river in tears because someone has shot her cat too.

This is a lovely book about feeling left out of something your friends all love. Jack wants to matter to Twitch the way the birds do, and that little sting of jealousy is very real. It's the kind of thing plenty of kids have felt in a friendship group and never said out loud.

There's plenty to enjoy for a nature-loving reader too. There's a secret hide in the wood with a pigeon loft up in the oak tree. There's a canal boat full of paintbrushes. And there's a storm on the way.

Is it too upsetting? It depends on your reader. Cats are shot in this story, there's blood, and one of them has already died before it begins. If your child is very soft-hearted about animals, that could be hard going. If they're the type who'd want to be first on the scene with a hoodie and a plan, they'll love Jack for it.

It's the second Twitchers book, so the friends already know each other well.

What to read next

If they're hooked on the gang, Clutch has Twitch racing to Jack's house at night after the peregrine falcons' nest on Passerine Pike is raided by an egg thief.