Spencer at age 11, is used to the terrible treatment from his classmates. He feels for his little sister though aged only 5 years old. She is often in tears from the teasing in her classroom, but Spencer knows there isn’t anything he can do about it.

Their small town of Fern Flats is surrounded by a metal cage. Now orange with rust, it has striped the town with it’s bar’s shadows for over 100 years, and these ‘stripes’ are just one of the reasons Spencer’s family chooses to live outside its ‘protection’.

This is a modern world where dinosaurs still exist, and the people of Fern Flats don’t understand and ridicule Spencer’s entire family for living on a farm where they care for and respect dinosaurs of the area. His family do have a healthy respect for the risks too, but prefer the open air and no ‘bars’ across their lives.

Spencer, his older brother Sean and little sister Ella know dinosaurs inside and out, and have been raised to always be alert when travelling around the farm on their quad bikes and what to look for, avoid, and how to flee dangerous situations. So when an alert comes from town about a dinosaur attack, they don’t believe it at first. Besides, how could any dinosaur – herbivore (like they have), or carnivore, get past the guards and inside the town’s cage?

Fern Flats is riled and frightened and when there is another scare, all fingers point at Spencer’s family, no matter how much they protest their innocence.

With their dinosaurs, farm and even family on the line, how is Spencer going to prove the town wrong, and solve the dinosaur mystery?

Right from the eye catching cover to the the final Dinosaur Fact Pages, Outside the Cage is a compelling read. Just trying to imagine our modern world with dinosaurs in the mix is an imaginative thrill, and I could easily picture the shadow lines criss-crossing a caged town – the setting of this tween novel.

Bullying instantly captured my empathy for the key characters, and also the reason why. Misunderstanding and suspicion, as often is the way, has lead to an entire town ostrasizing a family for choosing to live differently.

A mystery quickly makes this suspicion worse, and as the worry and pressure builds on the family, the action and danger also builds within the story. Mixing technology with dinosaurs within normal daily life made an interesting read, and the conclusion is a satisfying one with the hint of more in a series.

If so, I’ll definitely snap up more tales of tension, dinosaurs and a family doing things their way. 

Author – Carly Waddleton

Age – 8+

Find a copy here

(2024, UK Book Publishing, NZ Author, New Zealand, Action, Adventure, Animals, Conflict, Courage, Crime, Family, Mystery, School, Dinosaurs, Blame, Attack, Cameras, Warning systems, Bullying, Officials, Border, Siblings, Caged town, Truth, Lies, Suspicion)