Peter’s Pebbles

Author                              : Cherie Zamazing

Age range recommended : 3 – 8 years

Theme                             : Jungle animals, hobbies, fantasy, adventure

Opening lines –  

Peter loved collecting pebbles – large ones, small ones, thin ones, fat ones, round ones, flat ones! He painted his pebbles to look like all sorts of different animals. 

One day, as Peter was putting his newly-painted fish pebble on the shelf, he slipped and the pebble SPLOSHED in to his fish bowl. 

Suddenly, there was a flash of light and a BUBBLE and a FIZZ! Peter jumped back and saw a new colourful fish swimming around the fish bowl. 

Peter’s pebble had come to life!

Introduction and Synopsis –

Peter has a very interesting hobby – fashioning creatures by painting rounded, shapely pebbles. One day, he discovers that his pebbles are magical – they come to life when put in their natural environment – fish in a fish bowl, parrot in the air, monkey among bananas and a crocodile in the bath tub. Peter has a lot of fun playing with the animals and leaves them with the other painted pebbles in his room to go down for supper. When he races back to his room hearing a commotion in there, he is in for a surprise – the other pebbles have also been brought to life (kangaroo, zebra, giraffe, leopard, panda) and his room is a zoo! Faced with the immediate prospect of finding a place for all of them to live, Peter comes upon a brilliant idea. Another adventure in the night follows and with his creativity and imagination, Peter conjures up the perfect place to live for each of the animals.

Why did my caterpillar and I like this book?

ME - 

I loved the book!! The book has everything – wild imagination, fantastic creativity, bewitching illustrations, lovely text. The author has done a wonderful job with the book. It’s a great idea for a read-aloud option and also serves in generating interest in a new, different hobby activity. It talks about different animals, their habitats and also can serve as a talking point for different natural habitats in the world for exotic animals. The end, with Peter sailing till the middle of the ocean and creating a wonder habitat for the animals, is perfect for this fantasy adventure story.

MY TINY CATERPILLAR -

The pictures are what caught her fancy first. As I read on, her eyes widened with each animal or bird coming to life!  Painting images on pebbles is something new with A and she couldn’t really imagine how pebbles could be in the shape of a sitting monkey or a swimming fish. It took me a while to explain the hobby to her. She was quite interested to know on the map (Peter is shown educating the animals where on the map each come from) the different continents where the animals are found. She also revelled in the happiness knowing that all animals had a magical place to live. In her own words – ‘And they lived happily ever after!’

Online link -

We could not find any online video link for this story.

I personally loved the book so much that I looked up the author, Cherie Zamazing. Cherie has a degree in illustration. She works with a company in as an illustrator for a lot of children’s books, but this seems to be the only book that she has authored herself. A very impressive start, I’d say. You can see more of her works Cherie Zamazing.

This mother-daughter duo also practiced some pebble painting at home, taking inspiration from the book :-) We had collected pebbles from the beach on our visit there, but hadn't really done anything about it. Check out our artwork here. :-)

The cocoon rates it -

5/5

Highly recommended.