Critter Club – Marion and the Girls’ Getaway

Marion and the Girls' Getaway by Callie Barkley is a gentle animal story for 5 year olds about organising the perfect weekend for your three best friends.

What happens

Marion is the one who plans things. When she gets an idea, she makes a schedule to go with it.

The idea is this. Take Amy, Liz and Ellie up to her cousin's ski cabin for a whole weekend, and do not tell them until the last possible minute.

Getting the surprise ready is most of the fun. Marion needs to know whether her friends can ski, without letting on why she is asking. She tries a casual question on Liz and gets a very suspicious "o-kay". She invents a How Well Do You Know Your Friend quiz for Ellie, purely to sneak in one question about snow sports. She tells Amy a small fib about wanting to borrow skis.

Secrets, it turns out, are hard work.

Then comes the big reveal, with paper snowflakes hanging from her bedroom ceiling and fake frost sprayed round the windows.

Up at the cabin there are bunk beds, hot cocoa, animal tracks in the snow, and a cat called Ollie who will not come out of his carrier. Marion keeps going back to check on him. You can feel that worry sitting underneath the lovely weekend.

The four girls run an animal rescue shelter together called The Critter Club, so spotting wildlife properly matters to them. Amy carries a wildlife guide in her coat pocket and looks up every set of prints they find.

Your reader will probably recognise Marion completely, especially if they are a planner and a list-maker themselves. She is not bossy. She has just thought about it more than anyone else has.

It stays kind and low stakes all the way through. Nobody is horrible to anybody. The tension is whether the cat is all right, and whether the girls will actually spot one of the rabbits leaving all those tracks. For a 5 year old that is plenty.

It is also a nice one for a child who is a bit nervous about sleepovers or going away, because everything about the trip is warm and sorted out in advance.

What to read next

There is more of Marion in Critter Club - Marion Takes Charge, the one where she finally gets to look after her little sister Gabby during her parents' party. Being in charge turns out to be rather different from watching somebody else do it.