The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog

John R Erickson's The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog is a funny ranch mystery for 8 year olds told by a dog with a very high opinion of himself.

What happens

Hank is Head of Ranch Security (he'll tell you so, often). Somebody's been killing the hens in the chickenhouse, and Hank's on the case. His trusty assistant is Drover, who comes up lame whenever there's any danger about.

The investigation doesn't go well. Hank follows a trail he's sure belongs to a coon and lands right in the middle of a porcupine. Drover sends him into battle against a horned monster that turns out to be the milk cow. And when a second hen turns up dead, Hank does something with the evidence that makes him look VERY guilty (let's just say he was hungry).

Before long he's in disgrace with the cowboys and wearing a chicken head on a string round his neck. Whether Hank can prove he isn't the killer is what keeps the pages turning.

The joy of it is that Hank tells the whole thing himself and he's never, ever wrong. Everyone else is just letting him down. He works out that porcupines only eat trees, so that one's in the clear. He explains a stake-out with dictionary definitions. Your reader will see every mistake coming a mile off, long before Hank does.

There's a cracking scene in town too. Hank and Drover wind up a big boxer chained in the back of a pickup (mostly by weeing on his tyres). Then they pretend to be fast asleep when the cowboys storm out. Who hasn't wished they could pull that one off?

It's worth knowing that this is an American ranch book and Hank talks like a cowboy. He says throwed, figgered and he don't, and that's all on purpose. A confident reader will love the voice. One who's still working hard at decoding might like the first chapter read aloud together.

There's a bit of rough ranch life as well. Early on Loper fires his gun into the dark to stop the barking, and the dead hens are part of the story. It's played for laughs, though, and the porcupine quills and the kick from the milk cow hurt Hank's pride more than anything.

What to read next

This is where Hank's adventures begin, so it's a great place to start. If his version of events goes down well, there's more in the library. In The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob, Pete the Barncat gets the steak scraps, Hank gets a corncob and things go downhill from there.