Harriet Hound by Kate Foster

Title: Harriet Hound

Author: Kate Foster

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Walker Books

Published: 3^rd May 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 176

Price: $15.99

Synopsis: The world’s happiest and most dog-friendly superhero is here! A brand-new adventure for junior readers from Kate Foster.

Meet Harriet Hound. She’s eight years old 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 super special talents and problem-solving skills to save the day!

~*~

Meet Harriet Hound, an eight-year-old autistic girl who stims and loves dogs! She lives in Labrador with her family (a fictional town set in Australia), and on her eighth birthday, she finds a special gift from her grandmother – magical pyjamas that allow her to summon shelter dogs to help her. Oh, and her family owns a dog shelter as well. In Harriet’s first outing – three short stories – she will uncover vanishing vegetables, a sudden storm during a school excursion, and a carnival catastrophe – problems that only Harriet and her shelter dogs with alliterative names can solve! Harriet knows she can do this – it is her superpower, and she loves dogs – so Harriet will do all she can to save the day!

I have been following the development of this book online from author Kate Foster, who is also autistic and passionate about writing #OwnVoices books about kids with autism to give them positive and empowering representation, and each of her autistic characters is different – they stim in different ways, they have different ways of coping with stress and things that are unexpected in their lives, as well as embracing who they are with their autism – awesome humans who have their own way of being, just like the rest of us. I love that in Kate’s books neurodiversity and disability are represented in awesome ways – in ways that are appropriate for the character and audience in terms of language – which is determined by the readership the book is aimed at. What I loved about Harriet was that she was so open about explaining her autism to people – the readers, and her stimming, what worried her, and what she could do, and the way her family helped her. This is incredibly powerful because most importantly it allows kids like Harriet to see themselves in literature in a bright light, in a way that makes them jump for joy and feel accepted. And for people who aren’t autistic, I think it helps us understand the ways people can be autistic and that it is different for each person – much like the way all disabilities manifest themselves will be different for everyone.

I also loved all the alliteration and repetition in this book, in particular the last scene, which is the same in each story, and has a sense of comfort in it – that things will always be okay. The alliteration is fun and will help younger readers to explore language and learn more about language, to grasp how words can be playful and fun. And the similar endings are reassuring for kids who like repetition, because they can see that some things won’t change – this is engaging and ensure that kids and any readers really, can feel at ease knowing these stories have patterns and similarities but with different plots that are exciting and fun – I loved that these aspects all combined to create a great accessible story with wonderful autistic representation that will let autistic kids and adults see themselves being awesome but also see the reality of their lives – how their lives might be – reflected in the books they read. I loved this because I got to be entertained and learn something along the way.