Uan the Little Lamb

Quick Look

This edition is out of print but a paperback edition is available. Click on the cover in the carousel below.

Two Scottish children find a little lamb abandoned by her mother and decide to take care of it. Set in the Outer Hebrides.

Description

On a remote Scottish island, two children find an abandoned lamb and take her home. They call her 'Uan', which means 'lamb' in Gaelic.

Slowly the lamb grows up and they love playing with her and taking her everywhere. What will happen when she becomes a sheep?

Sandra Klaassen depicts the Outer Hebrides in drawings brimming with life and her love of the landscape and people. This is a charming story told through the eyes of two young children.

Reviews

'Ahhh. This is a tremendously sweet story of a little lamb. Although not an in-depth story, it is just enough for a young child to understand how the little lamb must be feeling. The pictures are so well structured. It has a lovely ending too. I can see we are going to read this one a few more time today already! 5/5'
-- Totz2teens.co.uk member review

'A wonderful bedtime story suitable for ages three upwards.'
--The Green Parent, Jan 2007

'...the book opens in a lovely descriptive manner
...the appeal of this straightforward book is in the disarming charm of the illustrations which, as the best should, are demonstrative of the words and extend things too. A ready-made audience would be fans of the perennial favourites that are Mairi Hedderwick's Katie Morag island stories. Here is a different but complementary book that offers riches in discovering about lambing and variations in islands and the lives led there...it's a lovely book.'
--Chris Brown, School Librarian, Winter 2006.

'...Little ones will love finding out what happens next in this gorgeous picture book that makes a perfect stocking filler.'
--Wave magazine, Dec 2006

'This is a delight of a book to share with the very young -- a simple story, charmingly told...The size and feel of this book are perfectly suited to the text and pictures, which are wonderfully matched. The illustrations (simply executed in line and wash) are particularly successful in capturing the feelings of both the children and the animals in the story. [Five Stars]'
--Books For Keeps, November 2006

'The simple story of Uan...will appeal to the very young, both boys and girls...The text and pictures...share the story equally...neither dominating the other...This strong sense of place gives the book a ring of truth that is picked up by the young reader, though the author never allows it to overwhelm the book...'
--Anne Gannon, Inis, the Children's Books Ireland magazine, Winter 2006

'This is a book that asks to be read and re-read. It's the perfect present; the special treat.'
--Leopard Magazine, Nov 2006

'Klaassen's simple, atmospheric pictures spill between pages and around the text bringing little Uan's character and the joy of her carers to life ... A delightful spring story.'
--Mel Tibbs, Juno, Spring/Summer 2007

Author

Sandra Klaassen was born in 1959 in the Netherlands but has lived on the Isle of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides since 2003, from where she drew her inspiration for Uan the Little Lamb. She has illustrated over twenty children's books, including Tom's Elephant, Around the Year, Fireflies, Magic fishes and Treasurediggers, and Mermaids, Pirates and Frothy Waves.