Zoe’s Rescue Zoo 8 – The Cuddly Koala

Amelia Cobb's The Cuddly Koala is a Rescue Zoo story for 5 year olds about a baby koala who would much rather be carried than climb.

What happens

Zoe Parker lives at the Rescue Zoo, in a little cottage by the gates. Her mum is the zoo vet. Her best friend is a grey mouse lemur called Meep, who is small enough to sit in her pocket.

And Zoe has a secret. Animals can understand her, and she can hear exactly what they say back.

It's half-term, and she has a school project to do. Choose something from the natural world, watch it properly, make notes.

Then a helicopter lands on the grass in front of the gift shop. Great-Uncle Horace is home from Queensland with a boomerang and a wooden crate.

Inside the crate is a koala joey, eight months old, whose mother left him to fend for himself.

Zoe quietly asks the joey his name, then has to pretend she thought of Kipp all by herself. That's a lovely running joke in these books.

Kipp's problem is climbing. He won't. He'd far rather cling to somebody's front and be carried about, and he's getting heavier every single day.

The grown-ups explain why that matters. A koala who never learns to climb can never find his own leaves.

There is a fall in this one, and you'll want to know about it first. Kipp gets partway up a eucalyptus tree, looks down, panics and drops. He isn't badly hurt (a grazed leg, a bandage, a few sore days) but it happens fast, and Zoe blames herself for it for a good stretch afterwards.

If animals coming to harm upsets your reader, that's the page to sit beside them for. If they're the sort who'd start designing a fix instead, they'll be very happy with what Zoe does next to an old school rucksack.

What makes these lovely is how ordinary the magic feels. Zoe talks a nervous joey round the way you'd talk to a toddler. Meep scampers up the climbing post to demonstrate, then balances on one paw at the top and pulls a face.

There's a sleepover in a room full of butterflies. There are a LOT of custard creams.

And there's Mr Pinch, the moany zoo manager, who thinks only proper grown-up keepers should go near the animals. He's exactly as satisfying to disagree with as you'd hope.

One clear problem to solve, and a surprising number of real animal facts tucked in sideways.

What to read next

If your reader wants more of Zoe's secret, The Pesky Polar Bear is in the library too. A new bear arrives at the polar enclosure to live alongside the one already there, and Zoe has to help the introductions go well.