A Girl, a Boy, a Horse and a Zorse byRebecca Green

Title: A Girl, a Boy, a Horse and a Zorse

Author: Rebecca Green

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: UWAP

Published: 13th October 2026

Format: Paperback

Pages: 320

Price: $17.99

Synopsis:  Orphaned, angry, and refusing to go to school, 12-year-old Roo wishes on a shooting star for a horse. The next day she wakes to find not only a horse but also a zebra outside her bedroom window! Her nan says she can keep the horse as long as she returns to school. When her horse gives birth to a zorse, Roo finds herself at the centre of world attention and with more chaos than she could have imagined.

Warm, funny and full of heart, A Girl, a Boy, a Horse and a Zorse is an unforgettable story about friendship, courage, anxiety, and finding where you truly belong, from Spiers Prize winner, Rebecca Green.

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Twelve-year-old Roo is an orphan, living in a country town with her grandmother. She’s angry, tired of wearing an eyepatch and refusing to go to school after a bullying incident on her very first day. She never wants to see Tonk, Giddy or any of the kids ever again! So she makes a wish for a horse one night. When she awakes to find a horse at her window, she’s convinced her wish has been granted!

Yet to keep the horse, she has to go back to school and find out if the horse comes from anywhere. Which is when she meets Tom, a young boy grappling with his own tragic home life, and together they decide to share the horse. And the zorse, a horse/zebra hybrid, they embark on a community-wide mission to save the zorse and keep it from a government agency eager to capture it.

Roo is lonely, and her story is about how she makes friends and finds her passion again after a tragedy that left her disabled and feeling as though she is an outsider. As though everyone is judging her, and it takes a while for her to make friends. For her to feel accepted. Miss Wisehart and her new friend Dani are what help her at first, and I liked Dani’s honesty about not knowing what to say at first. Their friendship formed out of respect and asking questions, out of learning how to manage the way things were. And that made it feel generous to me, and it went a long way to shaping how Roo ended up seeing herself around the people she trusted.

Whilst Roo’s disability isn’t the focus of the story it is still there, and I think the way her community worked to understand her and accept her was a powerful reminder that disabled people are people. That bullying and making jokes at their expense is never okay. Back to the story though, saving the horse and the zorse form the second half of this story. The first half is about the horse, Twinkle/Rocket, Tom and Roo finding their rhythm and about Roo becoming friends with Dani.

This really set the tone for the novel as did Miss Wisehart ensuring that the two bullying instigators weren’t allowed to talk to Roo. She was protected but not coddled. She had a voice, but was able to ask for help when she needed it. This balance shaped Roo. She’s still in the stage where she needs help for some things, but can do things on her own  as well.

This book had a good pace, where things happened as they needed to, and when they needed to as seen through the eyes of a child. Roo’s experiences are what made the book what it is, and what informed how she responded to things that happened. I loved the way things rolled out and happened, because it was a testament to Tom, Roo and their community about coming together to protect something precious. About making friends and finding where you belong when you have lost everything and feel so alone.

A Girl, a Boy, a Horse and a Zorse has something for everyone. It’s a great middle grade read, and even perfect for early young adult readers who want something contemporary, a little bit complex and that doesn’t have romance. Because not every reader is going to want that, and I think this fills a really great niche and gap for non-romance readers. The friendships are the important relationships next to Roo’s relationship with the horse, zorse and her nan, showing that even when we lose everything in our lives, there are people there to help us through.

This is a lovely book and one that I think many readers will enjoy.