Dingoes at Dinnertime drops Jack and Annie into an Australian forest in a drought, and Mary Pope Osborne has made it a proper adventure for 7 year olds who love animals.<\/p>\n
This one sits fourth in a run of four. Teddy, a little dog, is under a spell, and to free him Jack and Annie have to be given four things. One from a ship lost at sea, one from the prairie, one from a far-off forest and one from a kangaroo.<\/p>\n
They have the first three already. So Australia it is.<\/p>\n
The tree house lands in scrubby forest full of dry brown trees. It is baking hot. Jack takes one look and says the place needs rain.<\/p>\n
Then they smell smoke.<\/p>\n
Before they get anywhere near it they meet two emus taller than Jack, a koala asleep in the fork of a tree and a kookaburra that cackles like a donkey. Jack looks every single one of them up in his guidebook and writes notes.<\/p>\n
That is really the shape of these books. Something turns up, Jack reads a short paragraph of fact about it, Annie talks to it. Your reader picks up a surprising amount without noticing. (A koala is not a bear at all. Its name means “no drink”.)<\/p>\n
Then it gets tense. They find a mother kangaroo dozing on her back with a joey in her pouch, and Annie has a hopping contest with her. Three sandy wild dogs come out of the bushes.<\/p>\n
Worth knowing before you hand this one over. The mother kangaroo throws her baby out of her pouch so she can leap faster and lead the dingoes away from him. Jack reads the fact box that explains exactly why she does it. The joey is left in the grass trembling, and nobody in the book knows whether his mum is coming back.<\/p>\n
If your reader gets upset about animals in danger, that stretch is a hard one, and the smoke in the distance is going somewhere too. If they are the sort who loves a rescue and wants the real animal facts alongside it, this is exactly their thing.<\/p>\n
It is a short book, and Jack and Annie are 8 and 7 themselves, so a child who has just started finishing chapter books on their own can manage it. The edition is American, so expect Mom and miles per hour.<\/p>\n
The trip just before this one got them the gift from a forest in India. That one is Tigers at Twilight, and we have it here as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dingoes at Dinnertime drops Jack and Annie into an Australian forest in a drought, and Mary Pope Osborne has made it a proper adventure for 7 year olds who love animals. This one sits fourth in a run of four. Teddy, a little dog, is under a spell, and to free him Jack and Annie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":11193,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":9582,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Tigers at Twilight","lr_seo_hook":"A drought, a lost joey and dingoes closing in on an Australian forest."},"book_tag":[1045],"age_group":[19],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[691],"class_list":["post-7209","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-adventure-books","age_group-books-for-7-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-mary-pope-osborne"],"yoast_title":"Dingoes at Dinnertime by Mary Pope Osborne | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A drought, a lost joey and dingoes closing in on an Australian forest. For ages 7+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n