Dog Diaries – Dinosaur Disaster

James Patterson and Steven Butler's Dinosaur Disaster is a Dog Diaries adventure for 7 year olds, told by a dog who is sure the new museum is full of snacks.

What happens

Junior Catch-A-Doggy-Bone is a scruffy mutt who adores his boy, Ruff. He talks straight to the reader ("my person-pal", "my furless friend") and barely stops for breath. One Sunday at the dog park, a huge long-necked dinosaur races past the trees. It's only a picture on the side of a truck. But the truck is full of bones, and they smell AMAZING.

So Junior runs off after it, all the way across town. The bones are going to a grand new building he reads as the MMM! YOU SEE 'EM? Junior decides it must be a feast. Maybe it's even a surprise for his friend Lola's birthday? Then he finds out that humans only want to LOOK at the bones. He's utterly horrified.

Which is why he's hatching a plan, and it's not the plan of a GOOD BOY.

The fun is all in the voice. Dinosaurs are dino-roars. There's a toothy Terrier-saurus Rex, a Treat-ceratops that hoovers up crumbs and a sky full of Tongue-y-dactyls who lick everybody. Half the jokes are in the words, so it's brilliant for reading aloud (and for groaning at). Junior gets things wrong all the time, and young readers will love knowing better than the narrator.

There's plenty of toilet humour too, as you'd expect from a dog. Poop and pee get mentioned a lot!

Junior does get into real trouble for running across busy roads after that truck. Ruff is hopping mad and Junior is kept in for three whole days. It's played for laughs, but the message is clear enough.

Junior mentions lots of earlier adventures, but he introduces his family and his friends as he goes, so your reader won't miss anything important.

What to read next

One of those earlier adventures had a man called Saint Lick visiting at a human holiday called Crisp-Mouth. That's the story in Happy Howlidays, if they want more of Junior. It's his festive book, where he can't work out why anyone would put a tree inside the house.