The case Squirrel builds

Squirrel is skeptical of the patch at first. Nothing is happening, he says, until Bird produces five pumpkins. The favorite is enormous and orange. Bird hints that help would be useful. Squirrel sets off for gloves, which is the kind of errand this series uses as a door. When he returns, the count is wrong. A picture book can run on that one number. Five, then four, then fewer.

Squirrel detects. Peck marks, footprints, a sketch of the suspect. The reader is ahead of him, which is the pleasure Kirkus describes. Each clue belongs to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Bird has not been stolen. Bird has been delivering pumpkins to those friends and saving the big one for Squirrel. The thief Squirrel fears is the generosity he left the patch to avoid helping with.

The last turn is Squirrel hauling the prize pumpkin up a tree, so the pumpkin thief cannot find it. He says that, of course. The book lets him keep the theory after the theory has failed. That is the character. He is not cruel. He is distracted, and he would rather solve a crime than notice a gift.

What the pictures are doing

The cover is the patch: a pumpkin big enough to be a stage, a ladder, a squirrel holding a stem, a small bird, yellow leaves, a bat, and two eyes in the dark. Slater’s drawings in this series are bright and slightly worried. The Pumpkin Thief uses that worry. Squirrel’s face is the plot. If he looked calm, there would be no case.

A page of pumpkin facts sits at the end, the learning page the series includes. It does not replace the story. It gives a child something to say after the joke. The book is still about a squirrel who cannot count gifts as gifts. Autumn is the costume. The friendship is the subject.

Kirkus calls it more fun antics for returning readers and new ones. That is a fair description of a series book. The Leaf Thief made the joke with a leaf. This one makes it with a harvest. A child does not need the earlier book. A child who has it will enjoy the repeat: Squirrel, Bird, a missing thing, a solution that was kindness.

Who it is for

This is a picture book for a lap or a classroom in pumpkin season. The mystery is easy to say and easy to overturn. Five pumpkins. A favorite. A friend who leaves. A friend who shares. The reader who guesses the ending is the reader the book wants, because guessing is the fun.

The July 28, 2026 date puts it ahead of the Halloween table, which matches a story about growing the pumpkin rather than carving it. Nothing in the Kirkus account is a scare. The eyes in the leaves on the cover are atmosphere. The thief is not a monster.

This feature uses the reviewed plot because the picture book’s joke is the whole story, and hiding it would hide the book. It does not invent a page the review did not describe. The verified shape is enough: Bird’s patch, Squirrel’s case, and a pumpkin in a tree.

More Journal stories are on the Journal, and other book articles are collected in Book Reviews.