Otto Snyder

Pip has tried seventeen trees. Maybe eighteen-she loses count. But the great oak of Willowbrook Meadow, home to a wise owl, a gossiping bee, and a family of robins, feels different. It feels like *home*. Then the golden acorns start disappearing. Oakley's golden acorns are rare and legendary-glowing treasures that grow only once every few years when a tree is blessed with the deepest love. There are exactly twelve.
When they begin vanishing one by one in the night, the community turns suspicious. And suspicion, it turns out, lands squarely on the newest resident: a small, enthusiastic squirrel with a habit of collecting shiny things and exploring every corner of the tree. Pip didn't take them. But she's going to have to prove it. With the help of Nutkin-a thoughtful travelling squirrel who believes in logic over gossip-Pip follows tiny scratch marks, walnut shell fragments, and a near-invisible trail deep into the pine forest.
What she finds isn't a villain. It's a family in desperate need: the mouse family Hickory, quietly using the golden acorns to save their grandfather's life. Now Pip faces a harder challenge than solving a mystery. Can she convince her community that justice and compassion aren't opposites-and that what looks like theft might really be love, wearing a desperate disguise?The Acorn Mystery is a cosy middle grade mystery set in the world of Willowbrook Meadow.
It's a story about belonging and suspicion, observation and empathy, and the quiet power of asking for help-and offering it. Structured around Pip's dual role as outsider and detective, it shows young readers that true community isn't built on perfect trust, but on the willingness to understand. Every community has a golden acorn. The question is who it's really for.