Heartwood Hotel – Home Again

Kallie George's Heartwood Hotel story Home Again is a cosy woodland tale for 7 year olds about a little mouse who dreams of finding family.

What happens

Mona the mouse is a maid at the Heartwood Hotel, a grand hotel inside the biggest tree in Fernwood Forest. It's high summer, and the whole place is busy with a porcupine wedding. The cook, Ms. Prickles, is marrying Mr. Quillson, and every dress she tries on ends up full of holes.

Then a guest arrives asking for Mona by name. Strawberry is an older mouse who runs a little hotel for mice in the village. She's kind, she bakes beautifully and she calls everyone "sugar". Mona has never met another mouse at the Heartwood. Could Strawberry be family?

That question is what makes this one so sweet. Mona's parents died when she was small (she says so herself, early on), and the hotel staff are the nearest thing to family she has. So every little clue matters. A heart-shaped pancake. A carved seed necklace. The way Strawberry tests her hot honey with a whisker, just like Mona does.

There's plenty of fun along the way. Auntie Barb's wedding cake goes up in smoke (she meant to make a Bundt cake, not a burnt one). A tiny hummingbird messenger talks at top speed. And the staff tell stories all night at a picnic on the lobby floor.

Who wouldn't want a best friend like grumpy Tilly the squirrel, whose cure for everything is a seedcake?

There's some real worry in this one, though. Lightning from a summer storm starts a fire in the far part of the forest. The guests pack up in a panic, smoke drifts over the hotel and a frightened, injured fox cub turns up at the door. It's all gently handled, but a child who worries about fires might want you close by for those chapters.

Mona has already been at the Heartwood for three seasons, so there are nods to earlier adventures, like the wolves in the autumn. You don't need them to follow along.

What to read next

To see Mona's first winter at the hotel, try The Greatest Gift. The hibernating guests are tucked up in their suites, the snow is falling, and a sleepy groundhog wakes with a warning that something dangerous is coming.