An Otter Called Pebble

An Otter Called Pebble by Helen Peters is a rescue story for 7 year olds that starts with an odd noise coming from a bramble patch.

What happens

Jasmine is up the oak tree on her family's farm with her best friend Tom, hauling a basket of apples and biscuits up on a rope. The basket tips. The apples land in the wet grass. They've still got the biscuits, so that's fine.

Then they hear a squeaky chirping from the riverbank. Tom reckons it isn't birdsong at all. It's a distress call.

What they find is a baby otter, sitting on a pile of stones just above the water, squeaking its head off. No den in the bank anywhere. No mother in sight.

So they wait. Neither of them is sure whether they should be interfering with a wild animal at all.

Then a gust of wind pushes a wave over the stones and the cub goes into the river.

Everything after that is very practical, which is the best thing about this book. They run along the bank keeping pace with it. They try the bridge. They end up under a weeping willow with the cub tangled in the branches, going through a pile of sticks for one that's long enough and won't snap.

Can you hook an otter's head out of a branch without hurting its eye? That's the sort of problem your reader gets here. Jasmine's mum is a vet, so the animal care that follows is properly done rather than waved away.

Here's the bit to flag. Jasmine gets into the river. She's been told never to, and her dad has explained why. Fast current. Thick silt on the bottom that your feet sink into. She talks herself into it anyway, by deciding that hanging on to the willow branches means she isn't really in the water.

Have a think about that if your child copies what they read, particularly near water.

The cub also stops struggling and floats there, still, for a good while. A child who gets very worried about animals may find that hard going, even though the rescue is the whole point of the book.

For one who loves animals and wants the actual detail of how you save one, this is right up their street.

What to read next

Where it all began is A Piglet Called Truffle, which is how Jasmine got the pet pig you can see snuffling about in the orchard here. That one starts with a tiny piglet nobody wants and a trip out with her vet mum to a grumpy farmer's calving.