The Girl Who Thought She Was a Dog

Clare Balding's The Girl Who Thought She Was a Dog is a story for 6 year olds about a baby who is brought up alongside a boxer and decides she'd rather be one.

What happens

Twiglet is the boxer. He's lived with Rosie for two years when she comes home with a basket containing something that screeches like a cat and grabs his ear.

The baby is Fennel. Twiglet takes one look and appoints himself her guard.

Half the book is told from his side, which is the charm of it. He knows Doris the dachshund and Betty the cockerpoo. He thinks people who pick up a baby without letting her sniff them first are rude.

Fennel's first word is "Twiglet". Her second word takes a while.

She eats out of a metal bowl. She crawls when she could walk. She wags her bottom when visitors come. At the park she doesn't point and say "doggy", she says "Whippet. Border terrier. Poodle." Then, rather more loudly, "Ugly pug. Fat Labrador."

Her family are divided about this. Grandma thinks it's lovely. Uncle James thinks she genuinely doesn't know she's a person, and that school is going to be very hard.

He's right. School is awful. The other children chant "Dog, dog, dog" at her, and it takes her uncles, a long walk and a story about a boy who got called Radish to shift it.

Then Fennel decides she and Twiglet are going to Crufts.

Now the bit to know about before you hand it over. In chapter four there's a dog attack. A heavy, muscular dog called Tyson goes for Fennel at the park. Twiglet throws himself in front of it and is left "limp and motionless on the ground". He needs stitches, painkillers and a week of antibiotics, and the vet says his collar is the only reason it wasn't worse.

He recovers, and Fennel sleeps beside him for seven nights while he does. But it's sudden and it's frightening, and if your reader has ever been rushed at by a dog they will feel it.

For a child who's fine with that, the rest is warm, silly and rather lovely. There are nine chapters, the whole Crufts plan plays out, and the agility training in the back garden is the best part of the book. Fennel goes through the tunnel first to show Twiglet how.

It's also a book with two uncles in it who are simply there, being funny and kind, which is nice to see.

What to read next

For a bigger read when they're ready, there's The Racehorse Who Wouldn't Gallop. Charlie Bass accidentally buys a thoroughbred at auction and finds out he won't run at all unless a scruffy little pony is somewhere nearby.