Thief in the Garden, A

Josh, Connor and their mum go to live with their grandad because he needs looking after. Grandad is getting on and since his wife Florrie died he has started to do some strange things. He pours tea over his jacket potatoes, grills his slippers and has been out in the street in the nude. Josh and Connor are not sure what they think about moving but decide to make the best of it, and they feel much better after exploring the house’s extremely overgrown garden. Shortly after they move in, the boys find a stray orange cat in the garden and went to keep it. They call the cat Leo, and the boys and Grandad love him, but, as the vet tells them, he is a very old cat.

This gentle story introduces the concepts of change, old age and death. Grandad is poignantly used as a way of looking at the ageing process and the problems associated with senile dementia. An understanding about death is developed through family discussions about the boys’ dead grandmother, Florrie, and through the cat, Leo, dying of old age. And the story deftly uses these themes to answer difficult questions about what happens when a person or a pet gets old and dies.