Kids into books - Harriet's Hare

This weeks title: Harriet's Hare

Author: Dick King-Smith

Publisher: Corg/Random, $12.95

Illustrator: Valerie Littlewood

Age group: 7-9 years



Harriet sat up, suddenly wide-awake. Whatever was that noise?

It was a rushing, tearing, swishing noise - just the sound a rocket makes on Guy Fawkes Night, yet much much louder. But this was the start of a midsummer day and - she looked at her watch - early too, not five o'clock yet.

She leaped out of bed and ran to the window.

The farmhouse and its buildings were tucked into the side of a gentle hill, and in the little flat valley below were two large fields, the nearer one green, the further one gold.

In the first, her father's cows would normally have been waiting around the gateway for him to come and fetch them in for morning milking. But now the whole herd was galloping and buck-jumping around the pasture as though something had scared the wits out of them.