The Squeakling: The tale of Spike, Max and the tiny intruder product reviews

The arrival of a new baby is always disruptive, requiring everyone to adjust to the newcomer's presence, but sometimes the household pets are forgotten in the upheaval. Miss Seven was fascinated by this story, wondering how her own cat had reacted when she first joined the household. Her mother explained that the cat quickly learned to get out of the way so he did not get his fur pulled, and soon realised he was not allowed to sleep in the baby's crib even though it looked like a lovely new cat bed. However, cats do adjust quickly - often choosing to ignore the newcomer and just carrying on as usual. Dogs are quite different as this story highlights! They are more sensitive and also more emotionally dependent on their humans, so it takes time for them to accept the new situation.

Miss Seven was sad that poor Max and Spike could do no right, despite trying to get Hey Babe and Sugar to pay them some attention. Their efforts inevitably led to their being reprimanded and shooed outside even though they were just trying to help. Sibling rivalry has nothing on pet rivalry - because, of course, they saw the Squeakling as an interloper who had taken over their place in their humans' affections. Hey Babe and Sugar were too busy making the baby the centre of their universe to realise how unhappy the dogs were.

There is plenty of humour in the interaction of the two dogs. Every pet owner can relate to their destructive actions like dragging the washing through the mud or licking all the dirty dishes clean. Mr Five thought it was gross that they watered the house plants, but then he became sad on their behalf when they felt so left out that they wanted to run away from home. Both Mr Five and Miss Seven were delighted when the Squeakling finally came to the rescue by alerting her parents to what the dogs were planning. It ended happily with the older humans realising they needed to include Max and Spike. The Squeakling joined in, learning to stroke the two dogs and interact with them.

Both children thought the humans' names were hilarious - not only were Squeakling's mother and father called Sugar and Hey Babe, but they decided that the baby's name was Oopsy Daisy! This led to some discussion on what their own cats might call them.

They loved the illustrations, especially the way artist Ronja Schipper has captured the dogs' expressions. This made it easy for the children to understand what each one was feeling, and that in turn helped them to relate to the characters. They also liked the way some of the key words were highlighted in blue as it made it easy to find their place in the text. The children took turns taking the book to read at bedtime because they enjoyed it so much. One of their mother's friends is expecting her own squeakling soon, and she has three pets, so Miss Seven has suggested they buy her a copy of the book so she would not make the same mistakes as Hey Babe and Sugar!