A Deer Called Dotty

Helen Peters's A Deer Called Dotty is a gentle, detail-packed animal rescue story for 7 year olds about a girl who becomes mum to a newborn fawn.

What happens

Jasmine lives on Oak Tree Farm. Her dad's the farmer and her mum's a vet, so there's always an animal needing help. But nobody plans for what happens one May evening, when her big sister Ella is out practising her driving.

Just so you know before you start, the opening is sad. Ella hits a pregnant deer on the farm track. The mother deer dies, and Jasmine's mum does an emergency operation right there by the car to save the baby. Jasmine holds the torch, then helps pull the fawn out. It's told carefully and it isn't gory, but it's very real. A child who's sensitive about animals getting hurt might want you close by for the first two chapters.

After that, it's all about looking after tiny Dotty. And that's HARD work.

She's so small she could almost fit in your hand. She won't take a bottle. Jasmine has to feed her with a little syringe, one drop at a time, every two hours through the night (half term suddenly doesn't look like much of a holiday). She keeps charts. She reads up on everything. You learn loads about roe deer without ever feeling taught.

The best bit might be Ella. She's clever and bookish and absolutely not an outdoorsy person. She's also devastated about the deer. So Jasmine gives her a job helping with the other animals, and it works better than anyone expected. It's a kind, quiet way of showing a big sister getting over something awful.

There's comedy too, mostly from little brother Manu, who puts a worm in someone's sandwich "to see if he'd notice".

And there's the big question hanging over it all. Should a wild deer who thinks Jasmine is her mother ever be set free?

If you've got an animal-mad reader who likes their stories full of real facts and real care, this is lovely.

What to read next

To go back to where Jasmine's farm stories begin, try A Piglet Called Truffle, where she goes out on a call with her mum to a grumpy farmer's place and finds a sow who's just had eleven piglets.