Panda in the Spotlight

Sarah Horne's Panda in the Spotlight is a very funny family story for 7 year olds about a talking panda who's sure she's off to Hollywood.

What happens

Pudding is a real panda. She talks, she makes pancakes, and she escaped from Edinburgh Zoo a year ago to become the Campbell family's live-in nanny. Everyone outside the family thinks she's an actor in a panda suit.

That's handy, because Pudding and Dad now have a sell-out stage show called Panda-mime. Then a journalist called Penni P asks for an interview, and suddenly there's talk of a Hollywood friend casting a brand new Mary Poppins film. Pudding has dreamed of being Mary Poppins since her zoo days!

Only Callum, who's ten, heard Penni on the phone afterwards. He knows she's out to prove Pudding is a real panda. And nobody will listen to him, not even Pudding.

So Callum goes undercover with a spy kit from the back of a cereal box. Pudding comes too, in Dad's big black raincoat and sunglasses, riding a scooter. (A panda in a raincoat is not easy to hide.)

It's full of Scottish voices, Dad's terrible puns and a whole family catching what Callum calls Hollywood Fever. Tabby won't stop singing and Mum starts looking at posh houses online. Pudding even falls asleep and dreams herself into every famous film you can think of.

But underneath the jokes there's a boy who feels invisible in his own house. Have you ever been the only one who can see what's really going on, while everyone else is too excited to listen? Callum's frustration will feel very real to a lot of kids.

Pudding already lives with the Campbells when this story starts, and her earlier adventures get a mention, but Callum fills you in as he goes.

What to read next

It's a lovely pick for reading together or alone, especially for anyone who loves a silly animal story with a big heart. And if they like the idea of a very unusual nanny, try Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion. Nanny Piggins is a pig who looks after three children with help from Boris, a ten-foot dancing bear, and their father is so unobservant he doesn't even spot the bear under the table.