Author: Emily Ecton
Illustrator: David Mottram
© Date: 2021
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Pages: 259
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: Yes, but a lot of page layouts do not have illustrations
Publisher Recommended Age: 8-12
Bonus Activities at End of Book: No
Summary from Book: Butterbean is bored. She and the other pets pulled off a heist once, but that was, like, a million years ago. Nothing exciting has happened since then. That is, until Mrs. Third Floor shows up at their apartment, convinced there’s a ghost in the building.
Mrs. Third Floor’s rental unit is showing signs of paranormal activity-eerie noises, objects moving when no one is there, fish disappearing from the tank overnight. The pets decide to investigate. Soon they’re confronted with a bigger problem than just ghosts: professional ghost hunters who are offering to drive out the spirits for a hefty fee. It’s up to Butterbean and the rest of the gang to save Mrs. Third Floor from losing her life savings to scammers, all while dealing with some really annoying new animals. Can the furry friends uncover the truth in time?
Page Pig Thoughts: We quite enjoyed this story and did not find the start of the book with ghost rumors to be scary. This one has interesting issues for a kid to wrap their mind around, like scam artists and escapee zoo animals. We still celebrated the victories of the apartment pets and enjoyed seeing how their plans worked out. The author does a good job of keeping the details of the master plans a bit of a mystery, so you can be surprised at how all of the pieces fit together in the end.
We did not laugh nearly as much as we did at the first book. Although I did notice that the author indicates in the acknowledgments that this was a hard point in her life to write a funny story, but she still did a decent job with the humor. Not as funny as the first book, but plenty of laughs still to be had.
Family Unit: A group of humans and animals that make a family. Mrs. Food (elderly woman), Madison (school age girl), Butterbean (Long-haired Dachshund), Walt (Oriental shorthair cat), Oscar (Mynah bird), Marco and Polo (rats).
The animals have animal friends that visit: Wallace (rat), Chad (octopus). The animals investigating also leads to meeting a white cat and another octopus.
Wallace the rat has been living in Mrs. Third Floor’s apartment, unbeknownst to her. He used to be a pet rat, but took to the apartment vents when a child in his household squeezed him a little too tightly.
Madison is living with Mrs. Food while her aunt is deployed.
Conflict/Social Issues:
- Mrs. Food and Madison do not believe that ghosts are the cause of the mystery happenings in Mrs. Third Floor’s apartment, but they are careful to be supportive of her while she is struggling.
- Chad the octopus does not appreciate Jerome aka Mr. Wiggles (the escaped zoo celebrity octopus) treating him like an assistant and eating all of the food. Chad finds a way to be civil despite Jerome tending to trash Mrs. Third Floor’s apartment and expecting Chad to clean it up.
- The ghost hunters intend to scam Mrs. Third Floor for lots of money. Mrs. Food and Madison cannot talk her out of using the ghost hunters to solve her problems.
Positive Items:
- The pets work well together, accept each other for who they are, and make plans that use each other’s strong skills. They leave their comfort zones for the good of a mission (e.g. the rats are willing to climb on Walt the cat’s back, and Walt is willing to let the rats take a ride).
- The pets are able to face their fears to help others. When the possibility of a ghost is still present for Mrs. Third Floor’s apartment, they want to help Mrs. Third Floor (elderly woman) and Wallace (rat that decided to live in that apartment) feel at ease and comfortable in their apartment.
- The pets help Mrs. Third Floor keep her life savings and get the scamming ghost hunters arrested.
- The pets help Jerome the octopus get back home to the zoo. Zoo visitors can be happy again with the celebrity octopus being back. Jerome feels more refreshed and ready to go back to work with new inspiration.
Items of Interest:
- The book starts out a little scary. There is a creepy noise coming through the apartment vents, and items are unexpectedly moving around Mrs. Third Floor’s and Wallace’s apartment. Within 90 pages, you find out that the creepy noise is a white cat doing vocal exercises. Some of the unexpected item shifting scaring Mrs. Third Floor is just Wallace (e.g. licking cupcakes). The other unexpected item shifting scaring both Mrs. Third Floor and Wallace is Jerome, an escaped zoo octopus, living there unexpectedly.
- The pets have a stakeout/sleepover to figure out what is going on in Mrs. Third Floor’s apartment. They arm themselves with silverware, Polo the rat called dibs on a spoon. Walt the cat took a fork and Butterbean took a butterknife.
- Walt’s defense plan is usually “to go for the eyes,” but Walt never seems to use that.
- Mrs. Third Floor is convinced that her apartment is haunted with ghosts, and decides to hire local cable channel ghost hunters. Thanks to the animals, Mrs. Third Floor is not scammed out of her life savings by the ghost hunters, and the ghost hunters are arrested for fraud.
- The ghost hunters were setting up a fake ghost scene to film as evidence that Mrs. Third Floor’s apartment had a ghost that they were going to vanquish.
- Mrs. Third Floor continually carries Walt improperly (super tightly around the chest) because she believes animals will alert her to the presence of ghosts. Walt never bites or attacks Mrs. Third Floor, just grumbles…after Walt is put down and can breathe again.
- The ghost hunters discover Walt in the apartment and decide to lock her in the bathroom. Walt was carried by the scruff of her neck like a kitten (very undignified). Chad and Jerome (the octopuses) both laugh as they watch Walt trying to escape the bathroom. Walt is eventually rescued by the white cat.
- The book has two celebrity animals, Jerome the zoo octopus (stage name Mr. Wiggles) and Bertha the white cat of cat food commercials (stage name Princess Jubilee). Both are a little full of themselves, but both help the other animals pull off their plans.
- Oscar the bird is a news junkie and Walt the cat can type and operate a computer.
Other Books in Series (At Time of Posting):
- Book One – The Great Pet Heist (review)
- Book Three – The Great Vandal Scandal (review)
- Book Four – The Great Catnapping (review)
