The Dog Runner

Product Information

The city is dangerous, especially for two children and when their father doesn't return home, Ella and Emery decide to travel across the rough terrain to reach Emery's mother's farm. Along with their three dogs, two new recruits and a mushing sled, Ella and Emery will need to navigate the desolate countryside, avoiding armed offenders and learning to survive on the dying land. It's a book that would encourage some discussion afterwards, so would work as a class read in a school. The devastation that would ensue from crop failure is very obvious, and it felt a painfully close to the bone topic in our world today. It doesn't preach, however, and you don't feel as if you're reading something educational because over and above any message, it is a good adventure story.

What a great story from Bren MacDibble! It follows our very brave characters on a journey across a desolate and depressing landscape. Emery and Ella are siblings who are in a world where a 'red fungus' has destroyed all grasses across the country and the world. This has dire consequences (grass=grains) as now food is scarce and people are waiting on food deliveries to survive. People starving and most animals have starved. The world they know has become a very dangerous place with people stealing and terrorising each to survive. The siblings decide to leave the city with their beloved doggos to go to Emery's mum's house in the country where they will be safe. Their journey will be an intense test of survival: they'll need to avoid the dangers of desperate people, look after their dogs, and traverse a treacherous landscape. When Emery is seriously injured, Ella must find a way to keep going and keep hope alive for them both. But she can’t help wondering, will they ever see their parents again. The two main characters, especially Ella, the younger of the two children do start off being quite naive and trusting, while Emery, being four years older is a lot more cautious of the world and people around them, especially is this nation wide famine where gangs kill for resources. The five dogs were also a great addition to the book and it was evident how important they were in their journey into the country. Dit Engelstalige boek is het verhaal over de tienjarige Ella die samen met haar oudere halfbroer op reis gaat door een toekomstig, dystopisch Australië waar voedsel schaars is. Een schimmel heeft alle graszaden aangetast waardoor er ook geen graan meer verbouwd kan worden. Ella en haar iets oudere broer Emerys wachten samen met hun vader op een nieuw voedselpakket. Ella’s moeder zit vast aan de andere kant van de stad. Wanneer hun vader haar gaat halen maar niet terugkomt, besluit Emerys dat het tijd is om zijn moeder op te zoeken die buiten de stad woont en paddenstoelen kweekt. Ze doen dit met een hondenslee. Ella and her brother Emery are alone in a city that's starving to death. If they are going to survive, they must get away, upcountry, to find Emery's mum. But how can two kids travel such big distances across a dry, barren and dangerous landscape? Well, when you've got a few big doggos, the answer is you go mushing. When Emery is injured, Elle finds herself suddenly responsible for safely navigating the wheeled dog-sled through rough terrain, and even rougher encounters with desperate people. Like How to Bee, MacDibble's award-winning Middle Grade debut,The Dog Runner is set in an all-too-possible dystopian future Australia where climate change has taken hold. This compelling adventure underlines the depth of ancient knowledge and the human ingenuity which will give tomorrow's generations hope of averting ultimate global disaster.Until the end of the book this was a solid four star, but the last chapter is so rushed and underdeveloped that it undoes a lot of the hard work MacDibble put into crafting such a complex world. However, it’s likely to encourage young people to think seriously about the environment, which is always going to be a positive thing. This is a book about survival, doing what it takes to protect the people and animals you love and a hope for building a better future.

The best thing about The Dog Runner (other than the doggos) was Ella’s voice, which was extremely strong. Riddled with grammatical inaccuracies and slang, it brings Ella’s youth into the forefront of your mind and makes some of the trials that are faced all the more harrowing. The book also gives me quite a warm and cozy feel, like something that I would read in bed before sleep, or a book that is read out aloud to children, which is really quite wonderful and brilliant as it is a children’s book. There are books which give you an Epic feel, like LotR, or books that doesn’t make you feel anything at all. This book makes me feel at home, and maybe it is because I’m Australian or the warm looking cover, but either way, the writing was very enjoyable and I liked it immensely. Her first children's novel: How to Bee (2017) won multiple awards, The Dog Runner (2019) and Across the Risen Sea (2020) also won and were shortlisted in multiple awards. The Raven's Song (2022) written with the amazing award-winning Zana Fraillon, has recently been launched. I liked Ella a great deal, and I liked the developing relationship between Ella and Emery as we see that they overcome their differences, and the fact that although they have the same father and they have different mothers, they are still family, and belong to each other. The dogs also feature largely in the story, pulling them loyally on the sled across the dusty landscape, eating the remaining cans of sardines and then surviving on stringy kangaroos, stinky possums and even a bit of snake! They become characters themselves, and you are rooting for all of them to survive all the way to Emery's grandfather's house. This is an exciting read, and highly recommended.

Free Book Giveaways, Recommendations & more

The overall quality of the writing is so impressive too because the author never patronises her readers. There is just the right level of implied and explicit threat and violence to engage and entertain. She uses vivid and eloquent descriptions of both the environment and the characters, including the dogs, so that there is quite a cinematic feel to the read, making it exciting and vivid. I could imagine the settings so clearly as a result of the atmospheric writing.

The Dog Runner is a powerful imagining of things to come, and a reminder of the importance of kindness in the midst of uncertainty ... an excellent choice for sophisticated middle grade readers who want something meaty. It’s also a hopeful story for children thinking about climate crisis and what they might be able to do about it. What a superb, beautifully written book. Thought-provoking and action filled, The Dog Runner is an Australian, middle grade novel that is dystopian fiction at its finest. This will be sure to please teen readers and make for a fantastic class novel. The Dog Runner is a middle-grade dystopian novel, in which a red fungus has destroyed all wheat, leading to a shortage of food and a fight to survive. Ella and Emery take five big doggos and travel across the Australian desert to Emery’s mum’s house, avoiding danger and hoping to be reunited with their dad or Ella’s mum, who have both gone missing. I sometimes struggle with adventure stories like this when children don't act in a way that seems believably childlike, or their adventure passes beyond the realms of possibility, but I didn't have this issue here. The situations Ella and Emery find themselves in were terrifying, and difficult, but each time I believed their responses and reactions, because they felt realistic. So when Emery is hurt by two men on motorbikes, I absolutely believed Ella's attempts to fend these men off, because she is fighting for her life and her half-brother's life too. Their actions, such as killing animals to feed the dogs, or smashing lights on bikes to stop the bad men from seeing them, are their desperate attempts to survive.In a country reliant upon grain, a red fungus has spread throughout the city and native floral, grasslands have died, animals who normally feed off the land are starving. The narrative encourages discussion surrounding sustainable farming and sustainable living. All it takes is a bacteria or fungus introduced into our environment for our food source to completely overwhelmed. The government guaranteed rations would continue but ultimately left communities to ruin while those desperate for food begun to turn on one another.