Mouse in the Mistletoe

Animal Ark Holiday Special #6

by Lucy Daniels

When James's classmate, Sara, loses her new pet mouse, Muffin, in the local garden centre, it looks like she won't be in the mood for seasonal celebrations. Mandy and James ask everyone in the village if they've spotted the little white mouse, but with no luck. Now they're worrying about the garden centre cat, Mungo ... Could the missing mouse have strayed on to the tomcat's territory

Genres: Animals, Childrens

154 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Lucy Daniels is the collective name for the writing team that created the bestselling children's book series Animal Ark, many of the books are also published under the name of the series creator, Ben M. Baglio.

Reviews

[Diane in Australia · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the books in my daughter's Christmas collection.

5 Stars = I love it for sentimental reasons.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the sixth or 2000 edition of the Christmas Special. Quite honestly, I was surprised that the series didn't end on a Christmas Special. Perhaps they ran out of Christmas-themed title ideas. But that's several years in the future. In 2000, Animal Ark and its spin-off series were still riding high. This formulaic offering was by Andrea Abbott.

We've seen a similar A plot device before in Kitten in the Cold, Hamster in the Holly and who knows how many other books. Beloved pet becomes lost. The B plot is Christmas pet doings around Welford, including a Christmas pet party, which is another idea done to death in the Animal Ark Universe, not just in the original Animal Ark series. There are also some details about the sick pets that come to Animal Ark.

There are a lot of familiar characters in here, such as Sammy the Squirrel, Ernie Bell, Walter Pickard, the Spry twins, Mrs Ponsonby, her two dogs, and Simon the hard-working and long-suffering vet nurse.

This book has far fewer illustrations than usual. However, those that appear are of very good quality. They are done by Ann Baum, who'd been the Animal Ark illustrator for a couple of years now. One of her best ever contributions to the series is here, where a relieved owner is on his knees hugging his Welsh collie, Biddy.

This was one of 35 or so books that Scholastic in America would choose not to publish. No idea why. They published most of the Christmas Specials, but yet passed on this one. Perhaps someone at Scholastic had a bias against mice.

[Prim Seventeien · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so cute!!!

[Taylor Troncin]

Loved this series when I was younger. Still a huge animal lover and would like to read the rest of this series!