Today (January 21st 2025) is National Squirrel Appreciation Day! Now, not everyone appreciates these little guys. My mother for one. They ruin her garden every year and she can't stand them. I happen to think they are kind of cute and have been known to throw them nuts sometimes. (Don't tell my mother.) So, in honor of this special day I decided to read a book about squirrels.
The Secret Life of Squirrels by Sue Pope
The grey squirrels are worried about having enough food for the winter. They hear about trees that grow acorns all year long. The only problem is these trees are on the Isle of Wight, where birth the humans and the red squirrels do not want grey squirrels. The grey squirrels must find a way to get to this never ending food source even if it means war with the red squirrels.
I was browsing around on my local library's website and saw this book. The story sounded fun, so I borrowed an electronic copy. I read it on an app on my phone. In that format the book had 681 pages. I felt it was too long by about 400 pages. Although the stated plot line is there, most of the book is not about that at all. Most of the book is squirrels doing human things: going to concerts, learning to surf, ordering things on the internet, visiting the in-laws. All of which is cute, up to a point. But it is not enough to carry a whole book. In an attempt to show the squirrels living their human-like lives the plot gets so lost it feels like there isn't one at all. And it could have done with a good edit as well. The story did have some fun moments. It was fun to imagine squirrels having all the same problems as us and living this complex life right under the human's noses (humans who occasionally find evidence of this life and dismiss it as impossible) but, for me, it is too much. The story never really goes anywhere. After a while it just seems to drag on too much. The idea had some great potential but I don't think it was realized here.
