The Reluctant Spy

Timmy is awakened in the middle of the night by something going scritch, scritch under his bed. He turns on his flashlight. It's a 10-inch long rat with a brown fur hood, like a bandit. Timmy makes plans to trap the rat and kill it before his grandmother finds out there's a rat in the house. But before he can get his slippers on, Grandma enters his room. She's happy that Timmy has found Hildegarde, her new pet rat. She bought this rat in order to train her to be a spy. Rumor has it than Grandma was a spy in her younger days. Timmy isn't interested. He wants his sleep so he can try out for the track team the next day. An earthquake shakes the town. The street lamps blink, and the air is filled with the smell of hot metal as the town bridge collapses. When Timmy arrives home from school the next day, a strange woman, smelling of ambergris perfume is waiting at his door. She shows Timmy how to call Hildegarde and give her instructions in German. When she leaves, Timmy decides to go watch a science show being put on at the home of a local inventor. He learns that the inventor is a big admirer of Nicola Tesla. The next day, Timmy visits the inventor's home and sees a mysterious device that the inventor calls The Communicator. That night, somebody kidnaps Hildegarde. Now, Timmy is interested in spying, and in training Hildegarde. When Hildegarde is returned the next morning, she has a speaker implanted in her ear, which she removes during her morning cleaning ritual. Using carob candies as a reward, Timmy and Grandma train Hildegarde to press buttons and recognize colors, but the rat refuses to learn to press a toggle switch. Timmy and Grandma train Hildegarde using a speaker implanted in her ear and a fashionable spy bonnet camera on her head, and then send Hildegarde into the inventor's home for further exploring. One of Timmy's classmates, a girl who loves chocolates from heart-shaped boxes, follows him. Timmy learns that Nicola Tesla invented something much like The Communicator and accidentally caused an earthquake with it. Now Timmy knows what the inventor is really up to, and returns to the inventor's home, with the chocolate eating classmate, to rescue Hildegarde. He gets trapped in The Communicator. The only way to turn off the machine is to press a toggle switch, but neither Timmy nor the chocolate-eating girl can reach it. And Hildegarde won't press a toggle switch. Timmy asks the chocolate-eating girl to throw a chocolate candy onto the switch. Then he tells Hildegarde to press the brown button. She does so, and saves the town from a major earthquake. Grandma has been watching all this on her television, which receives Hildegarde's broadcast. She arrives along with the mysterious rat trainer, who turns out to be an FBI agent. They free Timmy from The Communicator. Timmy kisses Hildegarde, and the FBI agent does her job.Wickstrom, Lois June is the author of 'The Reluctant Spy' with ISBN 9780916176259 and ISBN 0916176258.