The Sun Thief
Alice Hemming and Nicola Slater
Scholastic

Team Hemming and Slater’s Squirrel is back and as the season is changing he’s once again confused about what is happening. When his friend Bird declares that it’s bedtime Squirrel disagrees, professing that he could never fall asleep when it’s still light. What he says and what he does though are two different things.

Then come bedtime a few weeks later there’s further confusion when he brushes his teeth as it’s dark when he expected it to be light. Squirrel insists to Bird that the dark is due to there being a sun thief, especially as he heard a peculiar “Hoo’ sound. This he’s told was merely an owl and the following morning just as Bird explained to him, joy of joys, the sun is back shining.

A similar thing happens as Squirrel is languishing in his bath the next evening but he tells himself it cannot be the sun thief. Venturing outside onto a branch with a torch he gives Bat a bit of a fright. “The sun thief just crashed into my tree” he shouts to Bird who explains about Bat being nocturnal.
Still unconvinced that a sun thief isn’t lurking somewhere Squirrel sets an early alarm that only serves to further convince the rodent that there IS a thief,. he wakes his friend before sunrise

and the ever patient Bird explains yet again. At last, Squirrel understands.

The final spread takes elements of the story – why the hours of darkness change throughout the year and the difference between diurnal animals including Squirrel and Bird, and nocturnal ones such as Bat.

Funny and gently educative,. Young children will thoroughly enjoy Squirrel’s over-reacting to a seasonal happening and delight in Nicola Slater’s close-ups that serve to enhance his verbal histrionics.