Hamster Princess Harriet is forced to attend a ball--in a dress!--and gets pulled into a mystery involving a hamster in glass shoes (Whiskerella). A rodent-girl in a bright red hood asks Harriet for help with weasel-wolves lurking around her grandmother's cottage (Little Red). Vernon's fifth and sixth trippy fairy-tale takeoffs use humor, quick pacing, occasional comic bookstyle panels, and snappy dialogue to engage young and struggling readers.

The Hamster Princess takes on Little Red Riding Hood.A small, sycophantic, adorable-voiced hamster girl wearing a bright red hood seeks out Princess Harriet for help, saying her grandmother is being terrorized by weasel-wolves. Although she is deeply repelled by the little hamster's extreme cuteness, Harriet and her trusty companion, Wilbur, follow Red into the woods, where they find the weasel-wolves. They are acting suspiciously docile—but Red says to ignore them; it's "the big one" who's the problem. Their first encounter with the big one involves a badly spelled note and a drawing of Harriet with "little stink-lines," but the second moonlit meeting is even stranger, as the big one is looking a lot more hamsterous and actually speaks (his name's Grey). Grey explains that he was "born a weasel-wolf" but was "bitten by a hamster under the full moon," making him a were-hamster. Probing reveals a shocking shared backstory between Grey and Harriet, and Wilbur's hilariously ill at ease while Grey and Harriet bond. Grey's looking for packs of weasel-wolves that have gone missing; it seems they vanish when Red and her grandmother enter an area. The jokes, both visual and textual, share space with the plot's central conflict: Harriet must decide whom to trust—a hamster subject who annoys her or a hamster-eating monster she likes. Vintage Vernon humor and a cast so lovable it hurts. (Graphic/fantasy hybrid. 7-12)