The Chase
Jenny Bloomfield
Frances Lincoln Children’s Books

What starts as a straightforward game of chase on the beach involving a child and her dog quickly escalates. The girl tosses a red ball and as she says chase, a plethora of pooches of all kinds join in. The chase that takes the ever increasing number of canines dashing through a museum creating mayhem in their wake. After the elusive ball they go, to a construction site and onto a beam that gives them a free ride to the top of a tall building, then down they dash again racing, chasing and CRASH! through a bandstand

and splash splash into some moving water narrowly missing cascading over a waterfall.
Eventually they end up right back where they started on the beach, where stands the child with her ball ready and waiting to start all over again.

Jenny Bloomfield’s jaunty rhyming text imitates the rhythm of the bouncy ball and the chase: ‘It’s a hustle, a bustle, a running tussle’. A playful pooch story that works really well as a read aloud but make sure you give your audience time to peruse each of the illustrations with their amusing details.. They’ll enjoy seeing one dog caught up in a tuba and removing it from the bandstand. Which breeds of dogs do they recognise from the many in the chase? Who can spot the one with wheels assisting its hind legs?