Llama Out Loud!

Yasmin Shah is fed up of being spoken over and ignored. Her loud but lovable family are always deciding what's best for her and the children at school think she's 'weird'. When a birthday wish brings some Llama-filled mayhem to her quiet life of checkers and... Well, just checkers really, Yasmin needs to take drastic action or face a summer in Pakistan with her strict Daadi.

Can Yasmin get rid of Levi before he ruins her life?

This duo are a lot of fun! Yasmin's quiet frustration and Levi's over the top antics make them a hilarious pair. Levi's pranks will have children giggling out loud and gasping in horror, in equal measure. Yasmin's increasingly desperate plans to get rid of him are also very funny.

Yasmin's family life, with her annoying brothers, constantly shouting Ammi and opinionated aunties, brings added chaos and fun to this story. I loved the illustrations of her time at home, and Yasmin's trek through everyone else's rooms to reach her own creates lots of laugh out loud moments.

Friendship is at the very heart of this story, as well as acceptance and overcoming the fear of being yourself. Communication is a vital part of any relationship, and learning to communicate with Levi helps Yasmin to open up to many of the people in her life.

The tone of the narration was my favourite part of this story - the puns, the haiku and the constant interjections had me giggling from beginning to end. It would be a great story to read aloud to a class.

I can't wait to find out what Yasmin and Levi get up to in their next adventure, and I'm certain children will love them too.

Yasmin lives in a tall house with one room on each floor and plenty of people taking up the space. They are all loud, full of noise and unlikely to listen to silent Yasmin. She hasn’t spoken since she was quite little, and rarely stands up for herself when getting in trouble by her older brothers. Yasmin’s birthday comes and she feels ignored, not even liking the gift from her parents.
At the market, she finds an ugly llama toy and though disturbed by the look of it, she is drawn to it. Her Auntie buys it for her and the toy comes home. Levi the llama comes to life and turns Yasmin’s world completely upside down. She gets detentions, her parents are threatening to send her to Pakistan to stay with her Daadi for the summer and she nearly loses an all important checkers match.
Checkers are Yasmin’s safe place, as is her time in OLD with the octogenarians. They accept her and make her feel welcome.
Levi, we find out later, has been sent on a secret mission to help Yasmin with the wish she made on her birthday. She wants to stand up for herself, especially in her loud family, but to do this she will need to find her voice,
Levi is a hilarious character, knowingly causing chaos to help Yasmin though it angers her more than helps initially. Will anger be enough for force Yasmin’s voice?

I adored this book! It gives a glimpse into a noisy inter generational family from Pakistan and their ways as well as providing a glimpse into a young girl who chooses to stay silent. With plenty of positive messages about being yourself, learning to push your boundaries and find your place in the family and world, there are moments of sheer hilarity as Levi causes endless problems.

Funny and meaningful, a delight from start to finish.

Llama Out Loud is hilarious. And I say that as someone who doesn't often actually laugh out loud at children's books - I appreciate the humour but it just doesn't tickle me, y'know? But Llama Out Loud tickled me, with Levi the Llama's constant quips and Yasmin's crazy family including her Ammi who JUSTCAN'THELPBUTSHOUTEVERYTHING. It's funny. Properly funny.

Llama out Loud follows Yasmin, a ten-year old girl who doesn't speak - the rest of her family do enough of that for her. Living in a tiny house with a huge family has made Yasmin shy away from socialisation and, as a result, her only friends can be found in an old person's daycare centre where she spends her free time playing checkers. When her Aunt buys her the ugliest stuffed llama toy she has ever seen from the local market, Yasmin's life is suddenly turned upside down. Enter Levi, the talking cockney llama who loves a practical joke and will do anything to help Yasmin find "real" friends who aren't octogenarians...

Life with Levi is the whirlwind that Yasmin never wanted and so begins weeks of stuffing Levi into the laundry basket, constantly kicking her bag under the table to get him to shutup and a whole load of trouble that Yasmin has always tried to avoid. Add that to the fact that her teacher has given her new boy Ezra to babysit and Yasmin's quiet life has been well and truly disrupted.

So begins a relationship that you will find in no other book. A young girl and her infuriating talking llama.

I absolutely loved Annabelle Sami's portrayal of Levi throughout, he is the perfect excitable companion tat as a reader you can't help to love, even when he is getting Yasmin detention after detention. Yasmin's family also deserve a special mention as they are just the most amazing characters, a perfect caricature of a noisy family that just don't see what's under their noses.

This is the perfect read-aloud for any Key Stage Two class, even a Year Two class would love this and achieving such a breadth of audience is so rare in children's fiction. I can't wait to share it in school when we return properly and I know it will have many classes rolling on the floor with laughter.

The perfect funny book, complete with cockney llama, chocolate digestives, tuna fish and a big dose of annoyance.