The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World by Shannon Hale (review)

When fourteen-year-old Doreen Green moves to New Jersey, her squirrel tail, fluency in squirrel, and familiarity with squirrel culture give her a easy in with the local fluffy-tailed rodents, especially feisty Tippy-Toe. Relating to other humans isn’t so natural (she’s got to hide her tail in the seat of her pants all the time), but Doreen manages a tentative friendship with Ana Sofia, a computer whiz who’s concerned about the rising crime in their neighborhood. When Doreen realizes that her squirrel skills (jumping high, running fast, smelling anything within a mile’s radius) could come in handy in snagging (and sometimes fighting) lawbreakers, superheroine Squirrel Girl is born. Third-person narration follows the viewpoints of several characters (including the dastardly Micromanager, Squirrel Girl’s nemesis), but Doreen offers up delightfully cheeky footnotes in each chapter that underscore her unflaggingly chipper nature and her bumbling naïveté. Squirrel Girl made her first comic book appearance in 1991 (acknowledged in an authors’ note), and the book draws on the Marvel world for maximum comedy, with Squirrel Girl texting the Avengers with hilarious but eventually fruitful results. Even kiddos who fancy the dark underbelly of the superhero world would be nuts (pun intended—no, required) to pass this up.