About This Book:
Harriet has an amazing superpower—when there’s trouble, she can magically summon the dogs from her family’s rescue shelter to save the day.
Meet Harriet Hound. She’s eight years old, lives in a town called Labrador, Australia, is autistic, and LOVES dogs! But Harriet has something else that makes her super: the power to summon the dogs from her family’s rescue shelter every time there’s trouble afoot. Whether it’s a carnival catastrophe, a sudden storm, or vanishing vegetables, Harriet and her best dog friends use their talents and problem-solving skills to help out. Just like Harriet herself, every dog has its own special strengths—like Greta the German shepherd, who is an excellent watchdog, and Hans and Helm the huskies, who are great at pulling carts. Even Bob the bulldog gets called to action when Harriet’s classmates need a dog who is slow and calm to help them walk carefully through the mud and not be afraid of a rainstorm. Harriet’s infectious enthusiasm, along with plenty of lists, dog facts, dynamic text design, and even a guide to rescuing a dog, make this a superpowered read.
*Review Contributed By Karen Yingling, Staff Reviewer*
Harriet and her dogs to the rescue!
While there are a large number of middle grade books with characters who must deal with a variety of health challenges, there are relatively fewer beginning chapter books. It is important for readers to meet characters who might not face the world in exactly the same way as they do. Readers who found the main characters struggles with arthritis in Winston’s Wednesday and Woof and found Bat’s experiences in Arnold’s A Boy Called Bat interesting will find looking at the world through Harriet’s eyes interesting and informative.
Harriet embarks on three different adventures. Each adventure ends with two pages describing different breeds of dogs, and there is a guide to help young readers rescue dogs at the end of the book.
In The Vanishing Vegetables, Harriet and the dogs must figure out who is taking the produce from the garden, and try to stop them. In The Sudden Storm, Harriet and her classmates from the Open Schoo (who are also autistic) have a field trip to the local wetlands and run into bad weather. In Carnival Catastrophe, Harriet is very excited about the local winter carnival, but when Mr. Hayashi has trouble with his ice cream van, the success of the festival is in jeopardy. In each case, Harriet summons rescue dogs and has them help her fix the situations. There are plenty of magical elements to the stories, like a vegan ice cream rainbow! Sometimes Harriet stru
