The Dog Runner by Bren MacDibble

In her earlier award winning book How to Bee the premise was a dystopian world without bees. The Dog Runner continues this same genre imagining another dystopian future this one where ALL grass crops in the world are killed by an invasive fungus.

Take a moment to think about grasses:
Wheat
Rice
Corn
Oats
Barley
Rye
Sorghum
Millet

Now think about the consequences of this. No food for grazing animals means no meat. No wheat means no bread and other products from flour such as pasta. No rice means this crisis has international consequences I can hardly imagine.

In the city there is a constant threat of violence. Bren MacDibble takes a close view by focusing on one small family living in an Australian city. Infrastructure is breaking down. Government promises of food are just empty words. Looting and extortion are rife. Ella, her older brother Emery and their dad are living in their apartment but they don't feel safe. Ella's mum, Jackie, has not returned. She has been gone for 8 months supposedly restoring essential services but now all the electricity has failed. Ella thinks mum will return any day but she doesn't. Then dad leaves to find Jackie and he does not return. Emery knows it is time to take action. His mother (not Jackie) and grandparents live in a remote outback region. The journey will take many days and it will be dangerous but staying in this city is also dangerous. Emery knows there will be food if they can just reach his Grandmother who is growing mushrooms in hidden caves.

Living with Ella and Emery are three huge dogs. Early in the story, Emery adds two more to the team. The dogs are attached to a set of harnesses and the kids are able use a dogsled with wheels. The race is on. Not against time but against the violence of desperate city gangs who are moving further away from the city in search of food. One really sinister aspect of this is the use of electric bikes. In one harrowing scene Ella and Emery very narrowly escape a gang of thugs who arrive on these silent vehicles.

The journey is made more difficult by their lack of food for themselves, the need to keep feeding five huge dogs and their daily need for water on our dry continent. I won't explain why but I may never look at a tin of sardines in quite the same way after reading this book.

The strength of this writing comes from the way Bren MacDibble allows her readers to 'join the dots'. You will need to notice every tiny detail so you can work out these family relationships. Reaching the farm will mean there is hope for the future, for Ella and her family and perhaps for everyone but just how this will happen is sure to surprise you.

I would follow The Dog Runner with an old book that you might find in a school library - Chance of Safety. There are some violent scenes in The Dog Runner so I would recommend it for readers aged 11+. For teachers it might be a good exercise to compare some of the more violent scenes with an old book called Angie's Ankles by Gary Hurle.

You can read over twenty pages on the publisher web site. I was lucky to have an Advance Reader Copy and I actually read it twice which is something I very rarely do. The Dog Runner will be published in February, 2019. I am a huge fan of How to Bee (CBCA Book of the Year Younger Readers 2018) and so I am happy to see these two books have related cover designs by the same illustrator Joanna Hunt.