A Llama Called Lightning

Helen Peters's A Llama Called Lightning is a farm story for 7 year olds about a lonely llama who keeps following Jasmine home.

What happens

Jasmine lives at Oak Tree Farm. Dad runs the farm and Mum is the vet, so there's always an animal needing something. Walking home from school with her best friend Tom, she spots a llama on his own in a field. His coat is matted and full of burrs. He won't come near them.

Then they get back to the farmyard, and there he is, standing right behind them!

His owner isn't impressed. He says the children must have let him out, and that Lightning never even breaks into a jog (the name was his daughter's idea, before she lost interest). A few days later Jasmine watches him leap a gate from standing still.

She's convinced he'd make a brilliant guard for the new lambs. Dad is very sure he wouldn't. It's lambing season, he's busy, and Mr Bentley wants five hundred pounds.

There's LOADS about llamas tucked into the story. Banana-shaped ears, humming, two toes with toenails, and spit that's actually sick from their stomachs (Jasmine's little brother Manu thinks that's the best thing ever). Jasmine and Tom look things up and then try them out, so you learn right alongside them.

It's gentle and funny. Jasmine is brilliant at arguing her case, and you'll probably spot Mum coming round long before Dad does. And who wouldn't want to see a llama being used as a climbing frame by a gang of lambs?

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Lambing is described properly. A ewe pushes away her smallest triplet, and a weak little lamb that Jasmine has been bottle-feeding is killed by a fox in the night. She finds him by the hedge with blood on his back, and she cries. For a child who gets very upset when animals are hurt, that chapter is sad. If your reader already knows a bit about farm life, it's an honest look at how things really go.

What to read next

For more of Jasmine and Tom, go back to where it all begins in A Piglet Called Truffle. A grumpy farmer is ready to leave the tiniest piglet in a litter to fend for itself, so Jasmine tucks her inside her coat and takes her home.