A FOAL CALLED STORM

The 11th installment of a British series featuring animal lover Jasmine.

School has just finished for the year when, the night after a big thunderstorm, Jasmine finds a wounded baby horse in one of the fields on her family farm. Jasmine and her best friend, Tom, use Jasmine's donkey, Mistletoe, to lure the foal into a pen so that Jasmine's mom, a vet, can treat his leg. Jasmine wants nothing more than to keep the foal, but she knows it belongs with its mother. With Tom’s help, she works to find the foal’s owner and solve the mystery of how it got to her family’s farm. Like the previous titles in the series, this book combines adventure with sound, age-appropriate information about how to care for and work with animals; however, the side plot involving a pair of rabbits and Jasmine's stereotyped and misogynistic great aunt feels contrived. That Jasmine is biracial is conveyed through the illustrations (Jasmine has brown skin, while her mom’s skin is comparatively darker, and her dad is White) and by her mother's surname: Singh. Black-and-white illustrations that appear every few pages, along with the relatively large font size and careful pacing, will make this story appealing to readers just moving on from beginner chapter books.

A cheerful horsey story with a dash of mystery.