Ginger’s Upstairs Pet by John Ryckman, 1971.

This is a cute picture book about a little girl named Ginger and the mysterious new “pet” she’s found.  At first, her mother doesn’t believe that Ginger has a pet, but Ginger keeps running downstairs from her room to ask for more food to feed her pet.  First, it’s cake.  Then, it’s apples.  Ginger keeps coming back down stairs with more requests for food.

Ginger’s mother thinks that Ginger is eating the food herself until Ginger comes downstairs with an especially strange request.  Then, her mother decides to see Ginger’s mysterious pet herself.

What kind of pet does Ginger have?  More importantly, how did she get it?

My Reaction and Spoilers

If you don’t want to know what pet Ginger has, don’t look at the pictures below!  I don’t mind giving spoilers, though, because this isn’t a very common book these days.  It isn’t on Internet Archive, although it’s possible to buy it on Amazon.  I won my copy in a drawing back when I was in first grade, and the school library was raffling off books they were getting rid of.

It’s a fun, light-hearted story about a strange day in the life of this family and the unusual “pet” that little Ginger temporarily acquires without even leaving her upstairs bedroom.  It’s a calm but humorous story that has enough reality to it to be believable.  Ginger’s pet and the way she found it are unusual enough that it would be unlikely that anything like this would happen to any real child, but not so far out and crazy to be completely unbelievable or too cartoony, and the situation is resolved realistically, after which Ginger and her mom have some cake themselves.  There’s nothing serious or tense about the story at all, so it would make good bedtime reading.  It’s one of the books that I think would be nice to see in print again.

The drawings are cute, and they’re interesting because they only use four colors: black, white, red, and green.