The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl – Squirrel Meets World

Squirrel Meets World by Shannon Hale is a very funny superhero story for 10 year olds about a girl who has to keep her tail tucked into her trousers.

What happens

Doreen Green is fourteen and has just moved from California to New Jersey. She's super strong, she can leap straight up into trees and she can chat with squirrels. She also has a big fluffy tail, and her mum has always told her to hide it.

So she heads out to make friends with it squashed down the back of her trousers. It doesn't go well. A group of role-players in the park tell her to go away, and the local squirrels run off too. Then she finds one caught in a nasty little trap and pulls the cage apart with her bare hands (and whispers the name Squirrel Girl to herself for the very first time).

School is worse. A girl calls her a freak on the first morning, the popular crowd make remarks about her cheeks and her teeth, and she ends up eating lunch in a toilet cubicle. Who hasn't had a first day like that?

Things start to turn when she sits down next to Ana Sofía, who wears hearing aids and would much rather be left alone with her maths book. Doreen goes home and spends hours brushing up on her sign language. It's such a kind thing to do, and it's the moment you know these two will be friends.

Doreen is SO much fun to spend time with. She's relentlessly cheerful, she makes up bad rhymes and she swears with words like "Fuzzmuppets". Some chapters are told by Tippy-Toe, the grey squirrel she rescued, who is very clear that she is never afraid. Cautious, yes. Occasionally horrified. Never afraid.

There's a gang of older boys called the Skunk Club tipping bins over on the dark streets, and one night Doreen scares them off by pretending to be the Jersey Ghost. It's more silly than scary, and it's the start of her wondering what kind of hero she might be.

If you've got a reader who loves superheroes but likes the jokes and the friendships even more, this is a lovely pick. Doreen is fourteen and in ninth grade, so she's older than the shelf. The worries about fitting in are ones a ten-year-old will know well, though.

What to read next

If they want another girl with powers and a school full of super friends, try Katana at Super Hero High. It starts with a party, a cake that never arrives and a whole school out searching for a friend who's never late.