Fenway and the Bone Thieves

Victoria J. Coe's Fenway and the Bone Thieves is a funny early chapter book for 7 year olds, told by a little dog who's quite sure the squirrels are out to get him.

What happens

Fenway knows a few things for certain. Dogs are better than squirrels. Hattie is the best short human ever. And the Treat Place (the pet shop, to you and me) is one of the greatest places on earth.

On this trip Hattie finally picks out a bone for him. Then she puts it in the trolley instead of in his mouth! This is the worst day ever.

When he does get it home, two sneaky squirrels come straight for it. So Fenway has what he calls the Best Idea Ever. He'll bury it somewhere no squirrel would ever think to look.

The only trouble is he can't remember where. (You can probably guess what happens to the garden.)

The joy of this one is that Fenway tells it, and he gets almost everything wrong. Hattie's mum and dad are Food Lady and Fetch Man. The garden is the Dog Park. A bath is torture. When Hattie is chasing him round the garden shouting his name, he thinks she wants to play!

Young readers will know far more than Fenway does, and that's half the fun. They'll spot why everyone is cross long before he does.

It's a whole story in ten short chapters, with lots of short sentences and happy noises (Wowee! Whoopee!). That makes it a nice step up for a child who's just starting to read chapter books on their own, and a fun one to share if they're not there yet.

There are some lovely little characters too. Patches and Goldie, the two dogs next door, are always ready with an opinion over the fence. And the squirrels never say a word, which somehow makes them even more suspicious.

If you've got a reader who has a dog (or badly wants one), they'll probably recognise a lot of this.

What to read next

For more of the same excitable narrator, Fenway heads to the Big Park in Fenway and the Frisbee Trick, where a Rottweiler called Carmen makes catching a Frisbee look very easy.