Zookeeper Fred keeps a tiny green snake called Vern, and Vern will not stay put. He hides in Fred's lunch. Then he gets out properly, ends up on top of a boy's head, and a town that was perfectly happy with its zoo yesterday is not happy with it today. The mayor shuts the place. A city council has to rule on whether the snakes stay.
That is book six of the Questioneers chapter books. Aaron Slater is the one in the group who draws, and he is the one who ends up leading the way out of it.
The science it actually teaches
Less than the cover implies, and I would rather say that at the top than bury it.
Here is the piece that is real, and it is sitting in the title. Vern hides. He hides in a lunch, he hides where he is not wanted, and the book calls that sneaky. Pushing into a small dark warm space is not sneaky. It is close to the only thing a snake does when it is not hunting or warming itself. Your child can hold both readings at once, the story's word and the animal's reason, and that gap is the best teaching in the book. A snake behaving like a snake got a whole zoo closed.
The rest is not zoology, and calling it zoology to make the shelf look better would be a lie. It is a town. Somebody got frightened, the fright turned into a demand that every snake go, and nobody in the room separated the two questions that matter: is this animal dangerous, and is being afraid of it the same thing as it being dangerous. A seven-year-old notices that gap when it is laid out this plainly, which is more than most adults manage on a local message board.
The book also asks straight out whether the snakes are a menace or something a town is better off having. It does not settle that by sending in an expert with a fact. It settles it in a room where people decide, and it lets your child watch how that goes. That is civics with an animal in it.
So: one solid piece of animal behaviour, one clean look at fear against evidence, and a working model of how a public decision actually gets made. That is a fair haul for $7.99. It is not a science book.
The child it lands with
There is a specific child this book was built for, and it is not the one who likes animals. It is the one who has met unfairness recently and is still angry about it, because this is unfairness pointed at an animal, which is easier to look at directly than unfairness pointed at a person. A child who is a little afraid of snakes and would like a reason not to be does well with it too.
And the child who does not read the way everyone around them reads. In his own picture book Aaron is a boy who struggles with words and says what he has to say in pictures instead. Here he is the one who cracks it, and he cracks it with a drawing rather than with a paragraph. If you have a child who is behind on reading and knows it, that is not a small thing to put in their hands.
One place to stop and talk
The page you want is the one where the town turns. Somebody is frightened, and within a page the demand has grown from this snake to all the snakes. Sit there a minute, because the move being made on that page is one your child will meet a hundred times in their life and will make themselves at least twice.
Then two questions, in this order. Was the boy with the snake on his head actually in danger. And if the answer is no, what are the people at the meeting really asking for. Children are good at this. They get to something like "they want to feel better, not to be safer" faster than you expect, and once a child owns that distinction they keep it.
If you want a third, ask who should decide. The zookeeper, who knows the animals. The people who are scared. The council, who know neither. There is no clean answer and that is why it is worth asking.
What to know going in
Nothing frightening happens to a child in this book and nothing happens to Vern that a seven-year-old cannot take. The cautions are elsewhere.
If your child is genuinely afraid of snakes, understand that this book has a loose snake in it and a scene where a snake lands on a person. It is played for comedy and it will still be the scene they remember at bedtime. Read it together the first time.
The crowd is the other one. A group of people deciding that a thing they are frightened of has to be removed is the engine of the plot, and a sensitive child can find that harder than any animal danger, because it is people choosing to behave badly. That is the whole point of the book and it is still worth knowing before you hand it over.
Then the reading level, which is the mismatch that catches people. The picture books in this series are for a five-year-old on a lap. This is not one of those. It is a chapter book with chapters, far more words per page, and a plot that runs across the whole thing. The store bands it 1 to 4, and a first grader is at the bottom of that band for a reason. A child who wore out Aaron Slater, Illustrator at five will not be reading this alone at five, and buying it as though they will is the most common way this book disappoints a house.
Where to get it
It is $7.99 at Aaron Slater and the Sneaky Snake. It is book six and it stands on its own, so the number on the spine should not stop you starting here. I would buy this one ahead of the others in the set if your child has ever been on the wrong end of a group decision, or if the reader in your house is the one who draws better than they read. Buy it later if neither of those is true, because the science in it is the lightest of any Questioneers title we shelve. It sits on the Stealth Science shelf on the strength of one snake fact and one habit of mind, and I would rather you knew that before the box arrives than after.
If your child liked this one
Books we have written about that sit close to this one, by reading level and by subject.
Ada Twist and the Disappearing Dogs: Method, Out Loud
Ada Twist and the Disappearing Dogs: The Questioneers Chapter Book #5 by Andrea Beaty
Grade 1 to 4
Iggy Peck and the Mysterious Mansion: Reading a House
Iggy Peck and the Mysterious Mansion: The Questioneers Chapter Book #3 by Andrea Beaty
Grade 1 to 4
Caterflies and Ice: The Book Where Zoey Gets It Wrong
Caterflies and Ice: Zoey and Sassafras #4 by Asia Citro
Grade 1 to 4
Dragons and Marshmallows: The Science and the Catch
Dragons and Marshmallows: Zoey and Sassafras #1 by Asia Citro
Grade 1 to 4
Browse every book we have written about by age, by kind of book and by subject: Find the right book for your child. Or see the whole Stealth Science shelf.
