Heartwood Hotel – A True Home

Kallie George's A True Home is the first Heartwood Hotel book, a cosy woodland story for 7 year olds about a small mouse who's never had a home for long.

What happens

Mona has lived in more places than she has whiskers. When a storm floods her hollow stump, she sets off into Fernwood Forest with a walnut-shell suitcase (the only thing she has left of her family). A swollen stream sweeps her away and leaves her at the foot of an enormous tree.

There's a heart carved in its trunk, just like the one on her suitcase. She presses it and a door clicks open.

Inside is the Heartwood Hotel, right in the middle of its Acorn Festival. There are rabbits dancing, a lizard in a bow tie on the front desk and honey to drink from a giant honeycomb. The sign over the fireplace says guests live by "protect and respect", not tooth and claw. Who wouldn't want to stay?

Mr Heartwood, the grand old badger who runs it, lets her have one night if she helps clean up after the party. By breakfast she's been taken on as a maid for the autumn.

The hotel itself is half the fun. Rabbits and moles sleep down in the root rooms, birds up on the twig floors, and there's a stargazing balcony right at the top. Your reader will probably love the little details, like a broom made from an upside-down dandelion.

Then there's Tilly, the red squirrel maid who REALLY doesn't think a mouse can do her job. She's bossy and sometimes quite unkind, though the other staff hint that she's had a hard time.

Mona is shy and gets plenty wrong (she scrubs the outside of a bath before she realises that isn't the point). But she's kind and quick-thinking too. Her fix with a sprig of peppermint, after a nervous skunk guest sprays, is a lovely moment.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Mona lost her parents in a storm long ago, too young to remember them, and Mr Heartwood's wife was taken by wolves. Both are backstory, told early and simply. Wolves do howl in the forest, though, and one worried guest is sure more of them are gathering. A child who gets anxious about scary animals might like to share this one with you. For most, the warm, busy hotel keeps it feeling safe.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, Kallie George also wrote Clover's Luck. Clover chases her runaway canary into the Woods and stumbles on an adoption agency for magical animals hidden there.