Zoe’s Rescue Zoo 11 – The Sleepy Snowy Owl

Amelia Cobb's The Sleepy Snowy Owl is a snowy, Christmassy Rescue Zoo story for 5 year olds about an owlet who's far too excited to sleep.

What happens

Home for Zoe Parker is a cottage inside the Rescue Zoo. Meep the mouse lemur lives there too (and spends their snowy walk tucked inside Zoe's coat, because snow makes his paws cold). Zoe also has a secret. She can talk to animals!

It's December and Great-Uncle Horace is home for Christmas. On a frosty walk in the woods, Meep runs off to steal some berries. And under the bush Zoe spots a little nest on the ground with one creamy white egg in it.

It's a snowy owl egg, all on its own. Snowy owls hardly ever come this far south, so it's a very lucky egg indeed.

Zoe gets to help look after it. She checks the incubator before and after school every day (with a mug of hot chocolate) and she's there late one night when it hatches. Out comes a fuzzy little dark-grey owlet! He's not white yet, which surprises Zoe (the bird keeper isn't worried at all). Zoe helps him choose a name. Ollie!

There's lots of Christmas in this one. Carols, mince pies, a stripy hat and scarf for Zoe, and a present for Ollie too. Then there's the big New Year's Eve show for the zoo's tenth birthday.

But Ollie has a problem. Snowy owls can choose whether to sleep at night or in the day, and Ollie can't decide. He wants to play with the night birds AND the day birds. So he ends up sleeping at neither and nodding off mid-hoot.

Sound familiar? If you've ever had a little one who's too excited about Christmas to go to sleep, you'll smile at this. Zoe even tucks Ollie in with her old teddy and reads him a bedtime story.

Then something happens one dark night by the fireworks hut, and it turns out sharp owl ears are very useful indeed.

It's a sweet, festive story and a lovely winter bedtime read.

What to read next

If they're keen for the next arrival, The Scruffy Sea Otter brings three orphaned otter pups to the zoo by boat.