Zoe’s Rescue Zoo 17 – The Little Llama

Amelia Cobb's The Little Llama is a wintry Rescue Zoo story for 5 year olds about a baby llama who badly wants a herd of her own.

What happens

Zoe Parker's home is the Rescue Zoo. Mum looks after the animals as the zoo's vet, a tiny mouse lemur called Meep is Zoe's best friend, and she's got a secret nobody else knows. She can chat with the animals!

It's nearly the end of term and everyone is waiting for snow. Then Great-Uncle Horace drives into Zoe's school playground with a trailer that's humming. He makes the children guess what's inside. It has very soft wool. It can climb the snowiest mountains. (Jack is quietly worried it's a tiger.)

It's a llama! She tells Zoe her name is Lottie.

Lottie had been left all alone on a patch of wasteland. Now she has a lovely new home, but there's one problem. Llamas like to live in a herd, and the Rescue Zoo hasn't got any other llamas.

So Lottie tries to make her own. She nudges and herds anyone she can find. The goats butt her back. The pigs are too sleepy to move. The donkeys aren't keen either.

In the end she lives in Zoe's back garden, where she eats Mum's rose bush and herds Meep round and round all day. Poor Meep is exhausted ("She even tried to groom me and get me to eat some grass… yuck!").

We all know a Lottie, don't we? Keen, loving and just a little bit too much! It's a really kind way of showing that friendly can sometimes feel bossy to someone else.

There's plenty more going on too. Zoe's class is putting on a winter show with real zoo animals, so there are penguins, puffins and snow leopard cubs to choose from. Zoe gets a sleepover with her friend Priti at Great-Uncle Horace's old house, toasting crumpets by the fire (with a bat hanging off the light). And then comes a proper snow day.

It's cosy and funny, which makes it a lovely one for a snowy evening.

What to read next

Fancy another arrival who causes chaos from the very first minute? The Messy Meerkat brings a whole family of meerkats to the zoo, and one of them escapes before the gate's even shut!