Squirrel on Stage

  Text copyright © 2022 by Vivian Vande Velde

  Illustrations copyright © 2022 by Steve Björkman

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Vande Velde, Vivian, author. | Björkman, Steve, illustrator.

  Title: Squirrel on stage / by Vivian Vande Velde; illustrated by Steve Björkman.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Holiday House, [2022] | “An 8 class pets + 1 squirrel book” | Audience: Ages 7–10 | Summary: “A schoolyard squirrel and Pet Rat try to watch the student production Cinderella but end up stealing the show when they accidentally end up on stage”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021042675 | ISBN 9780823452156 (hardcover)

  Subjects: CYAC: Squirrels—Fiction. | Rats—Fiction. | Theater—Fiction. Schools—Fiction. | Humorous stories. | LCGFT: Animal fiction. Humorous fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.V3986 Sqs 2022 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021042675

  Hardcover ISBN 9780823452156

  Ebook ISBN 9780823454297

  a_prh_6.0_141524365_c0_r0

  Dedicated to all the teachers who—with everything else they have to do—decide to help their students put on a play. —V.V.V.

  Contents

  Twitch: The Schoolyard Squirrel

  Sweetie: The Library Rat

  Twitch: A Play

  Sweetie: The Quest

  Twitch: The Audy-Toy-Room

  Sweetie: Cinderella!

  Twitch: The Cinderella Play

  Sweetie: Backstage

  Twitch: Walls That Move

  Sweetie: Listening for Twitch

  Twitch: Where’s Sweetie?

  Sweetie: Hiding

  Twitch: Magic

  Sweetie: The Ball

  Twitch: Still Not Seeing That Ball

  Sweetie: At the Stroke of Midnight

  Twitch: Trapped!

  Sweetie: Last Act

  Twitch: Curtain Call

  Afterword: Class Pets Talk About Plays

  Twitch:

  The Schoolyard Squirrel

  Squirrels tell the best stories. Wonderful squirrel stories I have heard include:

  • adventures such as “My Death-Defying Escape from a Cat,”

  • tragedies such as “Uncle Whiskers Drops a French Fry and Watches as a Seagull Steals It Away,”

  • romances such as “How Your Father and I Met in a Trash Can,”

  • and comedies such as “Nearsighted Cousin Chatter Mistakes a Lawn Ornament for Her Brother.”

  I have a very interesting story of my own about the time I buried a whole bunch of acorns, and then I couldn’t remember where I’d put them, and then I found them again. I guess that would be a mystery story.

  I learned the names of the different kinds of stories because I live in the yard that’s part of the people school, and because I’m an excellent listener. I love all kinds of stories.

  Chipmunks’ stories tend to be short and jokey.

  Groundhogs’ stories are very long with lots and lots of characters who can be hard to keep track of.

  And moles’ stories often start out making you laugh but usually you’re crying by the end.

  My least favorite are bird stories. Bird stories are very limited. They’re mostly: “This is my berry. Go away and leave me alone.” Or: “This is my worm. Go away and leave me alone.” Not much in the way of character or plot or suspense there. Birds are limited in their thinking. They even believe the seeds people put in the squirrel feeders are for them. The birds don’t notice the rides people build around the feeders: the slippery poles, the wobbly disks, the roofs that we have to dangle upside down from in order to get to the food—a playground, all for squirrels’ amusement, because squirrels are not limited in their thinking.

  Sometimes I’m in the mood for one kind of story, sometimes another.

  On this afternoon, I’m feeling a bit lazy. I’ve just eaten a nice juicy piece of peach a person threw away (people are always throwing away perfectly good food so that squirrels can have a well-rounded change from the seeds in all those squirrel feeders), and I’m thinking: My tummy is full, so I don’t need food. It’s not cold or raining or too windy—so I don’t need shelter.

  What I need is a story.

  No other squirrels are around at the moment, so that means I won’t hear the best-possible story.

  I don’t see any mice. Mice are close cousins to squirrels, so their stories are similar to squirrel stories. But mice are terrible storytellers. They’re always interrupting each other, and talking over each other, and they have trouble remembering important details, so someone is always going, “Oh, wait! I forgot to tell you…”

  There’s a chipmunk nearby, but she caught sight of the peach at the same moment I did, only with her shorter legs, I got to it first. I don’t think I want to hear any story she might choose to tell at this point.

  Living in a schoolyard, I sometimes listen to the people children tell each other stories while they are on the playground. But it’s been a while since I heard the ringing of the bell that says the school day is over.

  And yet I notice there are cars coming and parking. And people—people children and adult people—are getting out of the cars and going inside the school, just as though it’s morning when school starts instead of afternoon when it’s over.

  I ask myself: Did I fall asleep in the afternoon and miss the night and now it’s morning?

  Squirrels don’t usually get confused that way.

  Besides, if this was morning, I decide, I’d be hungrier.

  But no, this is afternoon, and yet people are going into the school.

  Why?

  I am within a mystery story of my own, I realize.

  I must go into the school and investigate.

  Sweetie:

  The Library Rat

  I love living in the school’s library even though my friend Twitch the squirrel shudders at the idea of being a pet and living in a cage.

  I tell him, “I never have to look for food. Miss Krause the librarian always makes sure I have enough.” Twitch needs to gather his own food, and then he has to hide it so none of the other animals who live outside can get to it before he does. Sometimes he forgets where he’s hidden whatever he’s gathered, and he has to start all over again.

  I tell him, “I don’t need to worry about cold weather, or wet weather, or animals that eat rats.” Sometimes I see Twitch through the window in the library, and he looks cold or wet. Or sometimes he’s there hiding from something that’s big and hungry and fierce.

  I tell him, “This is a library, so Miss Krause is always reading stories to the students.” Twitch loves stories almost as much as I do, but he tells me he doesn’t need to hear the exact words that are in the books, and that I tell them fine enough. He says he doesn’t need to hear the funny voices Miss Krause uses, and he doesn’t need to see the pictures. But sometimes I see him pressing his ear to the window when Miss Krause is reading to the children. Sometimes he stands on tiptoes on the ledge to see the pictures.

  Today I’m sad to be living in a cage in the library, because there’s something going on in another part of the school where I have never been. It is something I’d very much like to see, but I will only hear about it tomorrow after it’s all over.

  Miss Krause has written a play, which the children will be performing in the auditoriu
m for their parents. Miss Krause wrote the words, and Mr. Ziegler, the music teacher, wrote songs, both of them making sure there would be parts for all the children who wanted to be in the play. Over the past few weeks, I have sometimes heard the children practicing. (Practicing for a play is called rehearsing.) I have learned all about plays, and acting, and how a stage is set up, even though I have only seen drawings of a stage, not the actual stage that is in the school auditorium.

  I would so much love to see the play. The story is my absolute favorite: Cinderella. There are many fine things about the story of Cinderella, but the best part is that the hero is a rat. It is the rat who drives the coach that gets Cinderella to the ball so that she can meet the prince after her cruel stepmother and stepsisters have forbidden her to go.

  Very often people write stories where rats are the bad guys. But Cinderella’s rat coachman is a good role model for anyone.

  Of course there will not be a real rat in the play, but a boy dressed up like a rat. The boy who will play the part of the rat is named Liam. When Liam checks out books from the library, they are always ones that tell how things are made, or how they work. He has been practicing being a rat by sitting in front of my cage and watching me. When I scratch my ear, he scratches his ear. The first time he did this, he sat on the floor and bent his leg to get his foot close to his head. Miss Krause told him to use his front paw. So now he uses his hands to scratch his ear as well as to pretend to wash his pretend whiskers. (Mr. Ziegler has whiskers, but Liam does not.)

  Still, I wish I could see it. But I will have to satisfy myself with hearing about it. Tomorrow.

  Twitch:

  A Play

  Someone has placed a block of wood to keep the school door from locking behind each person that goes in. Not counting in the morning when the people children normally arrive, if you want to get into the school, you need to push the little button by the door and tell who you are.

  This is very inconvenient for squirrels.

  That’s why, if I want to get in, I usually look for an open window. It doesn’t need to be open all that much because I am very good at squeezing through a small space.

  But today, because of the block of wood, I don’t need to find a window. I just wait until nobody is looking, then I dash into the school. I have to be a little bit sneaky, because people love squirrels so much there is always the risk that someone will try to catch me and keep me as a pet.

  Inside, I see the people who I watched going in before me. They are standing in front of a long table where some other people are sitting and talking to them. The just-coming-in people and the sitting-there people trade pieces of paper back and forth.

  Nobody sees me even though I run right by them.

  People aren’t very good at keeping a careful lookout. They’re lucky they’re so big, or owls and foxes would always be swooping in and carrying them off to snack on them.

  I run down the hall to the room called library. I have a cousin who lives there. He is a rat, and his name is Sweetie. Sweetie is much smarter than most of my other cousins, including some of my squirrel cousins. This is true even though he chooses to live in a cage in the school. Sweetie is smart enough that he can open the cage, so he could escape if he wanted to. But he likes the people, and he likes the treats they give him—especially the yogurt drops—and most of all he likes the people stories he hears in the library.

  I like the yogurt drops, too—Sweetie shares them with me if he has any left over when I come to visit. And I like the stories. But I’m willing to wait and hear them after the people are gone.

  In the library, I scramble up the leg of a chair, to be able to jump up onto the table, and then I run the length of the table and leap to the bookcase where Sweetie’s cage sits.

  I think the thump! of my landing wakes him up—rats are more active during the night, so he takes a lot of naps during the day—but he doesn’t complain. He just stretches and yawns and says, “Hello, Twitch. I’m happy to see you. Have you come for a story?”

  “I have,” I tell him. “But meanwhile, I was wondering: why are people coming back to school in the afternoon?”

  Sweetie opens the cage door, but I don’t go in. I feel safe and happy outside the cage. Sweetie feels safe and happy inside the cage. But the open door is friendlier than talking through the bars. So, with Sweetie inside and me outside, Sweetie starts grooming his tail, and he tells me, “It’s the play.”

  I ask, “They’ve come back to play?” Usually the people children play outside, at least during the good weather. And usually the people parents don’t stay. I think: Maybe the children and their parents will all play together inside.

  But Sweetie says, “Play as a noun, not a verb.”

  I say, “What?” Sweetie is sometimes too smart. That comes from living in a school rather than in a schoolyard.

  He says, “A play is a story that is acted out.”

  I say, “I have heard some of the people children get scolded for acting out, but I’m not really sure what acting out means.”

  Sweetie scratches his ear. “Let’s start over. Sometimes I tell you a story…”

  I say, “And sometimes I tell you a story. Have I told you this one? Once I found a whole bunch of acorns and I buried them, but then I couldn’t remember where I’d put them. But then I found them again.”

  “Yes, you have told me that story,” Sweetie says. “And it’s a very good one. But in a play, instead of just telling the words, you would show the actions. Like this.” Sweetie runs from one end of his cage to the other. He uses a bigger-than-normal voice and asks, “Oh dear, oh dear, where have I put my acorns?”

  I say, “You’ve lost acorns, too?”

  Sweetie shakes his head but keeps looking, digging beneath the shredded paper that covers the floor of his cage. He says, “I know I buried them here someplace.”

  I say, “Maybe they’re in that corner by your food dish.”

  Sweetie shakes his head again so that I wonder if he has a flea in his ear. Then he runs to where I’m pointing and digs up a yogurt drop he’s put there for safekeeping. “Here’s my acorn!” he says. “Yay! I found it.”

  “Sweetie,” I tell him, “that’s not an acorn. That’s a yogurt drop.”

  Sweetie sighs. Going back to his normal voice, he says, “I know. I was acting out your story. I was pretending to be you. That’s what a play is.”

  “Oh,” I say. He didn’t sound like me at all. But I tell him, “I see. Are you going to eat that yogurt drop?”

  Sweetie hands me the yogurt drop, because he’s a good friend. He says, “So the children are putting on a play, and their parents have come to watch.”

  “A play about me and my acorns?” I ask. People love squirrels, so naturally they’d want to watch a play about me. I just don’t know how they knew my story to make a play out of it.

  “No,” Sweetie tells me. “It’s the story of Cinderella.”

  I stop chewing the yogurt drop while I consider. Do I know this story?

  Sweetie says, “It’s about a rat who becomes a coachman and helps this girl, Cinderella, get to the ball so she can meet the prince so that the two of them can live happily ever after. It’s my favorite.”

  This sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t remember all the details. I ask, “Cinderella and the rat live happily ever after? Or the prince and the rat? Does the rat play with the ball? Is it one of those really bouncy balls or is it the kind that people toss back and forth to each other?”

  Sweetie looks confused, so maybe he can’t remember all the details, either. “None of the above,” he tells me.

  “Okay,” I say. “Will they play the play here in the library?”

  “No.” Sweetie’s tail droops. “They’ll put on the play at a special place they call a stage.” Has there ever been a sadder-looking rat? When Sweetie was acting out my story about looking
for the acorns, he made his voice bigger than normal. Now his voice is smaller than normal when he tells me, “It’s a long way from the library to the auditorium where the stage is.”

  “But Cinderella is your favorite story,” I point out.

  He sighs. A rat sighing is a very sorrowful sound. “I’ll hear them talk about it tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I tell him. “I think it’s a good idea for the two of us to go together to see the play.”

  Sweetie:

  The Quest

  I say to Twitch, “I’d love to see the play, but I’m too likely to get lost on my way to the auditorium.”

  Twitch shakes his head. “You can have an adventure, like in an adventure story. People in adventure stories get lost all the time. But then they find their way. And then they live happily ever after.”

  “That would be nice,” I say. “But I can’t see well enough to find my way. Albino rats like me—rats with white fur and red eyes—we can’t see as well as rats with dark fur and dark eyes.”

  “You have red eyes?” he asks.

  He leans close and peers into my eyes. “You do!” he tells me. “You do have red eyes.”

  “I know,” I tell him.

  “But you can see me,” he points out. “And you can see well enough to open the cage. And sometimes you leave.”

  I can. But I don’t often. Usually I just sit on the bookcase with Twitch, sharing stories and munching yogurt drops.

  I explain, “I can see things that are close up. That’s why, when I leave the cage, I like to stay close to something. I’m not so good with crossing open spaces.”