Ants Don't Catch Flying Saucers

Carol L. MacKay is a children’s librarian living in Bawlf, Alberta.

Abby and her younger sister, Tess, are pet-sitting again. This time
their assignment is to watch a colony of ants while their owner is away.
Unfortunately, the owner is none other than Dirk Kaefermann, Abby’s
archenemy from Mrs. Hernandez’s Grade 5 class. He’s been giving Abby
a hard time at school and will probably make things worse if anything
happens to his ants. As usual, things don’t go smoothly with what
should have been a simple job.

Sound familiar? It is. Formulaic, but fairly well-written, Ants Don’t
Catch Flying Saucers could fill a niche on chapter-book shelves, but one
that could just as easily be filled by any of the volumes in
Krailing’s Petsitter’s Club series or Betsy Duffey’s earlier Pet
Patrol books. Wiebe does include some good information about ant life
that may interest young readers, but the book’s cover, though
colorful, lacks shelf appeal due to poor illustration quality. What
might have set this book apart is its Canadian origin, but the author
fails to provide such specifics, opting for a more generic approach. Not
a first-choice purchase.