Pepper Masalah and the Giant Bird

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

Pepper Masalah lives with Zamir and his family on an olive farm in Australia. Zam’s 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 hasn’t flown for hundreds of years, so it is shaky at first and can’t 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 third 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 bird’s 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.