book cover

The Dog Runner

by Bren MacDibble

Interest age: 12 to 14
Reading age: 12+

Published by Old Barn Books, 2019

  • Adventure
  • Dystopia

About this book

A terrible fungus has swept the world, decimating crops and triggering a worldwide food crisis. With no grass to eat, even the chickens and cattle have died. In Australia, Ella and her family were surviving on government rations, but the deliveries have stopped, the power has gone out, and her parents are missing. Her half-brother Emery makes a difficult decision: to take their dogs, pack their last remaining food, and trek across the barren outback in search of safety at his mum’s mushroom farm.

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.

A perilous adventure with dystopian and environmental themes that cut unnervingly close to potential reality, The Dog Runner is a tense, thrilling adventure full of close calls, but also glowing with heart, whether it's the relationship between Ella and Emery or their love for the "doggos" helping them get to where they need to be.

About the author

Bren MacDibble won the Australian Children's Book Council Book of the Year Award, as well as the New Zealand Book Award for Junior Fiction in 2018 with her novel How to Bee - and simultaneously claimed the top award in the YA category in New Zealand for her debut novel, written under the penname Cally Black. She is undoubtedly one of the most important new names to emerge from the Australian children's fiction world in recent years.

The Dog Runner is a meticulously researched, yet empathetic and gripping adventure story which will inspire young readers to think about the implications of climate change and how they will help to mitigate them. It has been shortlisted for the Red Magazine Big Book Award 2019 in the UK, as well as for the New Zealand Book Award for Junior Fiction.

After rebuilding her home, destroyed in a wildfire, Bren sold it and most of the contents and now lives in a camper van and travels around Australia, writing and teaching.

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