Fenway and Hattie and the Evil Bunny Gang

Victoria J. Coe's Fenway and Hattie and the Evil Bunny Gang is a funny dog's-eye story for 7 year olds about a terrier who's sure his garden is under attack.

What happens

Fenway is a Jack Russell and, in his own words, a professional. His job is guarding the Dog Park (the back garden to you and me) from nasty squirrels. And he loves his short human, Hattie, more than anything in the whole world.

Then one day Food Lady's vegetable patch is dug up and chewed to bits. Fenway sniffs a mysterious wild smell that isn't a squirrel or a chipmunk. Worse, he smells something very like it on the neighbours across the road. Clearly there's a gang at work, and only Fenway can stop them!

The best part is that Fenway doesn't understand human talk, so he gets hold of the wrong end of everything. When Hattie and her friend Angel get excited about two words, "Fenway" and "park", he thinks they're taking him out for a run. Your reader might just work out they're talking about something else entirely (those stiff papery strips look an awful lot like tickets). Knowing more than the narrator is a real treat at this age.

Meanwhile Hattie badly needs to prove she's responsible, and Fenway keeps diving into the vegetables and digging under the fence. Poor Hattie! You can see the trouble coming long before he can.

It's a lovely one to read aloud. The sentences are short and bouncy, and Fenway is so full of himself you can't help giggling. He greets his friends Goldie and Patches with a bum-sniffing circle dance (cue giggles), and he puts up with the itchy beaded collar Hattie makes him. There's also a funny dream where giant fanged creatures surround him in the garden, which is more silly than scary.

If your reader has a dog, they'll probably recognise a few of Fenway's habits. And if they don't, they'll want one.

What to read next

This book comes after Fenway and Hattie's move out of the city. If your reader wants to start at the very beginning, try the first Fenway and Hattie book, where the family is packing up the flat and Fenway is convinced they've been burgled by squirrels.