Scratch and Sniff

by Margaret Ryan

Officer Penny Penrose gets left behind when the police rush to look into a robbery at Doogood’s Furniture Store. But that won’t stop her dogs, Scratch and Sniff, from getting on the case. Apart from jelly donuts, there is nothing they like more than catching a crook.

48 pages, Library Binding

First published January 30, 2007

About the author

Margaret Ryan is a former teacher who has written over eighty books for children between the ages of five and eleven. She loves to enthuse children about books and won a Scottish Arts Council Award for her book, The Queen's Birthday Hat. She always includes the children in her audience by dressing them up as the characters in her story. She believes that author visits should be fun. She has had children's stories on T.V. and radio, and has also been commissioned to write books for schools, children's poetry, and a series of books for reluctant readers. Her books are translated into many different languages.

Reviews

[Theediscerning · Rating 4 out of 5]

This very early reader looks like it could well have been part of a series when first released in 2006. It certainly deserved to have companion adventures. Two dogs (and I did laugh at the sausage dog's self-description of "a champion draught excluder") realise the town copper is a bit of a thicket, and so help their human mummy policewoman save the day when the furniture store gets burgled. It's exceedingly brisk, even for those first sampling books of such length, but its canine characters are both likeable and mature-sounding, so I think they'd agree with me that this is an intelligent choice.