Fear of Bad Dreams Causes Sleepless Night in Scaredy Squirrel at Night

Last week, I found out about Squirrel Appreciation Day. This led me to seek out some books having to do with squirrels. In one case, I managed to find a whole series, written and illustrated by Melanie Watt. Scaredy Squirrel at Night is one of those books.

Scaredy Squirrel is a little paranoid. He’s so terrified of having bad dreams that he decides to avoid sleep altogether, for days on end. But when his horoscope tells him that his dreams are about to come true, more drastic measures are called for. It’s time to gather an arsenal worthy of Home Alone and set up some traps for his inevitable scary visitors. But what will really happen when midnight comes?

Scaredy Squirrel, like many cartoon squirrels, is a tad freakish-looking. He lacks the cuteness of more realistic picture book depictions like Micawber or Earl the Squirrel. Additionally, this book doesn’t read entirely like a traditional story. There’s a definite hyperness to it, and Watt often provides schematics or lists to illustrate Scaredy’s thought processes. These take a little getting used to, but they’re also the funniest element of the book. The story is written in the present tense, which I don’t usually particularly like for stories, but it does increase the sense of immediacy.

I think that lots of children will be able to relate to the fear of having bad dreams, along with the general idea of staying up indefinitely; it seems like a really good idea at first, but as you run out of things to do and become increasingly irritable, it starts to lose its luster. Scaredy Squirrel’s suffers from such side effects as forgetfulness, moodiness, hallucinations and, naturally, drowsiness. But he’s so worried about those dreams that he doesn’t care, and apparently this squirrel has enough reserves of energy to keep going long after most would crash.

What makes this book especially amusing is the fact that his fears include not only ghosts and dragons (and quite unintimidating-looking ones at that) but also fairies and unicorns. Kids with the nighttime jitters may forget some of their worries in the midst of giggles. The climax offers both a startling surprise and a sweet gesture of friendship as it finally shows the neighbors reacting to all of Scaredy Squirrel’s strange behavior. It all adds up to a book that, despite its rather odd-looking characters, is undeniably cute.