This book was amazing!! It had a great storyline and the charcters were great to. I would definitely recommend this to someone w ho may just be starting to read again or someone who has just started!

I absolutely loved Bren MacDibble’s first book How to Bee, so I was really excited about this one. While they are very different in a lot of respects, there are many similarities between them and their unique style and voice helps them stand out from the crowd. Both are set in a not too distant dystopian future in which fictional (but entirely plausible) environmental crisis have come to pass. In this case, a fungus has spread across Australia killing all the grasses, wheats, grains…food is in increasingly short supply. This is both a love letter to nature and a wake up call to examine our behaviours and the things we take for granted in our everyday lives. Both have the most wonderful main characters. Here we follow Ella and her step brother, Emery, as they embark on a dangerous journey out of the city. It’s lovely to see how reassuring and calming Emery is towards Ella as she struggles with worry, doubt and fear. Likewise, it’s great to see Ella have the chance to prove (to herself as much as anyone else) how courageous, strong and decisive she too can be when needed. They are a brilliant example of a balanced, realistic and, above all, close sibling team. While animals are integral to these books, there’s enough realism to avoid sentimentality. The dogs here are loved fiercely, but respected too. There’s a wonderful contrast to the dogs we see playing and piling on the children at the start of the book and the way they behave at various points later on. Bren Macdibble shows a great understanding of them and they feel real. Likewise, Bren MacDibble’s love of nature really comes through in the setting and the description of Ella and Emery’s journey. It is vivid – I felt the heat of the midday sun, the dust, the scratchy shrubs, the cool night air. All of it is superbly described and takes you right into the Australian landscape. This is a gritty and tense adventure which takes on environmental issues with the urgency they deserve – there is threat writ large throughout in more ways than one. Pacey and full of danger, this is also a book which shouts of the importance of loyalty, family and self-belief. I loved it and I can’t wait to see what Bren MacDibble writes next.

A wonderfully unique adventure set in an apocalyptic Australia where all the grass has disappeared and so food is very scarce. This meant that the outside world has become a very hostile place as law and order has slowly disintegrated. For Ella and her family and many others like theirs this means the outside world has become very dangerous. When Ella's Dad doesn’t return one day her brother suggests they go to their Grandmother's house with their sled dogs, this means traipsing across the Australian outback in ridiculous temperatures trying to avoid being seen. This is a wonderful adventure story about the environment and how our resources are shared throughout the world, which will get children thinking. It is also about family and what we are willing to do to save the ones we love. I love dogs and so it is a given that I would love this book and it didn’t disappoint, the relationships between the children and the dogs was lovely to read and the story itself raced along almost as fast as the dogs!