Pepper Masalah and the Temple of Cats

Auteur

Rosanne Hawke has authored over 30 children’s and YA books. She has been a teacher, an aid worker in Pakistan & the UAE, and a lecturer in Creative Writing. Her books explore cultural and social issues, history, mystery, family and faith. She often writes of displacement, belonging and reconciliation and tells stories of children unheard. Many of her books have been longlisted, shortlisted or won awards in Australia and Cornwall. Her novels include Shahana: Through My Eyes and Taj and the Great Camel Trek, winner of the 2012 Adelaide Festival Award for Children’s Literature, shortlisted in the Patricia Wrightson Prize and Highly Commended in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. She is the 2015 recipient of the Nance Donkin award and is a Carclew, Asialink, Varuna, and May Gibbs Fellow. Rosanne is a Bard of Cornwall and lives in South Australia in an ancient Cornish farmhouse with underground rooms.

Texte du rabat

The carpet lands in the River Nile. After Pepper has a run-in with a crocodile, she and Zam are taken to a temple to be safe. Here cats are revered and Pepper most of all. She is so special the attendants want to make a mummy of her.

Résumé

Pepper Masalah and the Flying Carpet by Rosanne Hawke is a series of five or more chapter story books featuring an adventurous black cat calledPepper Masalah, and her nine-year-old friend, Zamir.

Pepper Masalah lives with Zamir and his family on an olive farm in Australia. Zams grandmother is from the old country (Kashmir) and she brought with her an ancient carpet. She believes the carpet can fly, and that it will try to find its previous master in Kashmir. It hasnt flown for hundreds of years so it is shaky at first, and cant find its bearings. It lands in many countries on the way to Kashmir, where Pepper Masalah and Zamir have dangerous but exciting adventures.

In the 3rd book in this series, Pepper Masalah and the Giant Bird, the ancient carpet is closer to finding Kashmir and flies over Afghanistan. A huge bird (the Simurgh from Persian folklore) whisks Pepper off the carpet and up to her nest of eggs, high on a mountain. The carpet is disorientated without Pepper and disappears after Zam falls off. Zam makes the long climb to save Pepper before she becomes food for the birds huge chicks. Pepper makes a friend in the nest, a girl called Dana.

A cobra comes to eat the eggs. Pepper manages to save the eggs by telling the cobra riddles and winning the riddle game. But Pepper and Zam still need to find the carpet in order to get home to Australia