Hide and Squeak by Renata Hopkins is a lively, humorous short story that follows Benji as he settles into a new home with his mum, her girlfriend Tina, and Tina’s son, Nat. When one of Benji’s pet mice escapes, Tina’s fear of mice turns an ordinary morning into an urgent search. As Benji and Nat work together to find the runaway, Benji worries that his mistake will mean losing his beloved pets. Through playful word choices, authentic dialogue, and close character perspective, readers gain insight into Benji’s anxiety, his growing connection with Nat, and the care that helps a new family find its feet.

Blending suspense, warmth, and mouse-themed humour, the text supports students to think deeply about responsibility, empathy, and belonging. It invites discussion about respecting others’ fears, working together to solve problems, and responding to mistakes with understanding and practical support. Tina’s thoughtful solution and the boys’ shared humour make this an engaging and relatable text for upper primary learners exploring change and relationships.

This pack contains wide range of response activities including:

• A guided reading plan exploring key literacy elements including inference and deduction, language use, making connection and text organisation, along with key questioning to promote emotional intelligence, metacognition and compassionate inquiry. 
• An independent learning contract complete with explainer videos for activity clarity
  
• A wide range of response activities to support developing and embedding key literacy skills including sentence and word work, spelling, and cloze activities. 

Curriculum Phase: Phase 2

Year Level: Year 5

English: reading for meaning, analysing character motivation and emotional change, exploring dialogue, humour and wordplay, identifying how suspense is created, inferring themes and messages, summarising key events, and supporting ideas with evidence from the text

Health and Physical Education: emotional wellbeing, managing change, understanding fears, empathy, responsibility, cooperation, and building supportive relationships

Social Sciences: diverse family structures, whānau relationships, identity and belonging, adapting to a shared home, and understanding how people’s needs influence decisions

Fiction: realistic narrative, short story

Key words include: belonging, blended families, change, character development, cooperation, dialogue, empathy, family, fears, humour, mice, narrative text, pets, problem-solving, realistic fiction, relationships, responsibility, short story, suspense, whānau, wordplay