Read Dog Diaries free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
James Patterson and Steven Butler's Dog Diaries is a giggly adventure for 7 year olds, written by a rescue dog who's just found his boy.
Junior is SO pleased you've opened his diary that he gives you his favourite stick straight away. One end's a bit chewed, but he insists.
Not long ago he was stuck in the Hills Village Dog Shelter (or pooch prison, as he calls it). Then Mom-Lady takes him home and he meets Ruff, a skinny boy with messy hair. Ruff calls him a GOOD BOY and that's it. Best friends for life.
Home is brilliant. There's the comfy squishy thing to nap on, a park full of his old friends from the shelter and one terrible enemy who lives in the hall cupboard. It's the Vacuum Cleaner, of course.
Then Junior spots a raccoon at the park. What follows involves a Saint Bernard, a runaway pushchair and some very wet grannies. It ends with a furious woman dangling from the swings.
She's Iona Stricker and she runs the obedience classes. Junior has to take her course or she'll report him to the shelter. Could anything be worse for a dog who just wants to chase things? Junior writes his will and signs it "Dead Junior" (he's absolutely fine, he's just being dramatic).
When the classes go badly, Ruff makes a deal instead. Junior has one week to win a prize at the town dog show, up against Stricker's perfectly trained poodle, Duchess.
The whole book is Junior talking straight to your reader, entry by entry through the day, with LOTS of capitals. He gets human things wonderfully wrong. When Mom-Lady mentions getting him microchipped, he's sure he's about to be turned into a bag of crisps!
There's a joke in there for grown-ups too. Stricker calls Ruff "Mr. Khatchadorian" and Junior thinks she's just saying Catch-A-Doggy-Bone wrong.
Expect plenty of toilet humour. Junior leaves a poop in his sister's trainers and he's very proud of it. He lives in America, so you'll meet a Mom-Lady and a backyard (and American spellings). The pictures on nearly every spread make it a quick, bouncy read for a child getting going on longer books.
This is where Junior's diaries start. If he goes down well, Big Top Bonanza is in the library too. A carnival and circus set up in the dog park, and Junior can't wait to get a look inside the big top.
A library hand-picked by an English teacher, delivered through a calm, ad-free app. If your child already loves reading, we keep up.
7-day free trial. Then £7.99/month.
