Zoe’s Rescue Zoo 13 – The Picky Puffin

Amelia Cobb's The Picky Puffin is a sweet Rescue Zoo story for 5 year olds about a tiny puffin who turns her beak up at everything.

What happens

Zoe lives at her Great-Uncle Horace's Rescue Zoo, where her mum is the vet. She also has a secret. She can chat with the animals, and they chat back! Her best friend is Meep, a cheeky little mouse lemur who sleeps at the end of her bed.

One evening Great-Uncle Horace sails home with an emergency. It's a puffling (that's a baby puffin), and her feathers are covered in sticky oil from a spill near her home in Iceland. Zoe helps give her a bath in warm soapy water, one feather at a time. Her name is Piper.

Once Piper is clean, a new problem starts. She won't eat her fish. She won't go into the burrow Zoe digs for her, or the next one, or the one after that. Is she just picky, or is something else wrong?

Zoe is desperate to help, and she's also doing a school project on Piper. That's where Meep comes in. He decides Piper is boring and does everything he can to steal the attention back. When Zoe's class visit the zoo, he prances along the fence and they all take photos of him instead!

It's a lovely little story about jealousy. Meep is sure Zoe likes the new arrival better, so he sulks on top of the wardrobe and refuses his favourite food. Lots of children with a new baby brother or sister will recognise that feeling (and so will a few grown-ups).

You also pick up little puffin facts along the way, like how they swallow their fish whole and why oil makes a bird so poorly. It's told gently, but it's clear that oil in the sea is a real danger to birds. If you've got a reader who worries about animals being hurt, it's worth reading that first chapter together.

Mr Pinch, the fussy zoo manager, is always grumbling about mess. Great-Uncle Horace is jolly and always rushing off on a new mission. And Zoe works things out by thinking hard about how the animals feel.

What to read next

If this one goes down well, go back to the very first Rescue Zoo book, The Lonely Lion Cub. It tells how Zoe found out she could understand animals, and a tiny lion cub needs her help.