An Owl Called Star

Helen Peters's An Owl Called Star is a gentle farm story for 7 year olds about a girl who saves a starving barn owl and then learns what a hunter really is.

What happens

Jasmine lives on Oak Tree Farm. Her dad runs the farm and her mum Nadia is a vet, so animals in trouble tend to end up in their kitchen. Jasmine has already rescued a runt piglet, a duckling, a lamb and her sheepdog Sky (and quite a few more). But she's never had an owl.

She and her best friend Tom find him lying in the brambles by an old barn, so light he hardly weighs anything. At first they're not even sure he's alive. Mum has to feed him through a tube, and everyone holds their breath until he wakes up. Jasmine calls him Star.

You learn loads about barn owls along the way. Did you know their ears sit at slightly different heights so they can pinpoint a sound? It's woven into the story so naturally it never feels like a lesson.

Meanwhile Jasmine is planning a secret Halloween party in the barn, which doesn't belong to her. Then she offers to look after a classmate's hamster for the weekend without asking her parents first. An owl and a hamster in the same bedroom? You can see where this is heading, even if Jasmine can't!

That's the real heart of it. Jasmine means well, but one secret leads to another and soon she's in far deeper than she meant to be. Her guilt when things go wrong feels very real. There's a moment when she looks at Star's talons and feels something she's never felt about an animal before (fear).

It's a lovely mix of cosy and gripping. The hamster part is properly tense, so a very tender-hearted reader might want a grown-up close by for it.

What to read next

To go back to where Jasmine's rescuing began, try A Piglet Called Truffle, about a tiny runt she won't leave behind on a grumpy farmer's farm.