ALA Booklist (Mon May 01 00:00:00 CDT 2006)

In a tongue-in-cheek tale that may help to prod anxious readers out of their hidebound routines, a squirrel discovers the pleasures of leaping into the unknown. As the world's a scary place, what with the killer bees, green Martians, tarantulas, germs, and sharks that might be lurking about, Scaredy Squirrel keeps to his tree, and to a precise, minute-by-minute daily schedule til a supposed killer bee actually wanders by, causing Squirrel to dislodge his suitcase-size emergency kit. A wild lunge to rescue it turns into a long glide (portrayed in a gatefold), as Squirrel discovers to his astonishment that he is a flying squirrel. Eventually, Squirrel returns in triumph to his tree and from then on adds a daily glide to his accustomed rounds. Despite the simply drawn cartoons and brief text, this is more sophisticated in tone than Martin Waddell's Tiny's Big Adventure (2004), though the message is similar.

Horn Book (Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2006)

Scaredy Squirrel never leaves his tree and follows the same routine every day. When a bee drifts by, however, Scaredy panics and jumps out of his tree--and learns something new about himself. Watt's child-friendly illustrations and tongue-in-cheek text have a lot of fun with Scaredy. Concluding the story on the back endpapers may be a problem for libraries.

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 3-Scaredy Squirrel has a catalog of creatures and things that frighten him. His life in his nut tree is comfortably predictable, and he has an emergency kit and escape plan to cover every danger. One day one of his fears is realized when he encounters a "killer bee." Panicking, he drops his emergency kit out of the tree and jumps after it without his parachute. To his surprise, he learns that he is actually a flying squirrel, and he adapts his routine to include a daily "jump into the unknown." With his iconic nervous grin and over-the-top punctiliousness, Scaredy Squirrel is an endearing character. Thick-lined cartoons with bold patches of color, quirky charts and graphs, and clever asides provide humor that will appeal to children. Like other successful worrywarts before him, such as Kevin Henkes's Wemberly Worried (HarperCollins, 2000) and Rosemary Wells's Felix and the Worrier (Candlewick, 2003), Scaredy Squirrel needn't fret about finding readers to cheer him on.-Rachel G. Payne, Brooklyn Public Library, NY Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.