Bambi: The Winter Trail

Annie Auerbach's Bambi: The Winter Trail is a gentle snowy walk of a story for 5 year olds about a line of footprints and the friends who set off to find out whose they are.

What happens

It's winter in the forest. Thumper comes thumping over to wake Bambi up, because it's a perfect day for playing. The sky is blue and there's new snow everywhere.

Then Thumper spots them. A line of footprints across the snow! Who could have made them?

So off they go to follow the trail. Along the way they ask everyone they meet. Friend Owl is very grumpy about being woken up (and anyway, he says, his wings take him everywhere). Faline comes along to help. Flower the skunk is fast asleep for the whole winter and just mumbles "See you next spring" without opening his eyes.

There's a frozen pond to cross too. Thumper glides straight over, but Bambi isn't much of a skater. After a lot of slipping about, he takes a run-up and whizzes across on his tummy. Little ones will love that bit!

It's a really lovely, calm one to read aloud. Every stop brings a new animal and a new guess. You could pause each time and ask your reader who they think made the tracks. Was it the raccoon whose mouth is too full of berries to answer? Or the woodpecker family tapping away in the pines?

Thumper is as impatient as ever. When shy Bambi can't quite get his question out, Thumper just shouts it up at the birds himself. It's a sweet little friendship between the two of them.

The trail finally leads somewhere cosy, and there's a lovely surprise waiting at the end of the day (no spoilers, but it involves tracks too). It's the kind of ending that works really well just before bed.

What to read next

If they love the idea of following mysterious footprints through the snow, The Mystery of the Icy Paw Prints has twins in snowy Alaska tracking down some very strange paw prints of their own.