ANGUS AND SADIE

This unexpectedly simple tale illustrates a year on a farm through the eyes of dogs. Mister and Missus, who want a dog for their Maine farm, adopt two shelter puppies. Mister wants a farm dog and prefers the male; Missus falls for the sweet female with a broken leg. Puppies Angus and Sadie learn about farming, discovering cats, skunks, tractors and sheep. Mister hopes to have better trained dogs than his brother, whose dog competes at trials. Angus is very clever and learns quickly, but Sadie is easily distracted by butterflies and sunbeams. Neither Sadie nor Missus mind that Sadie will never be well trained, but Angus is proud. When Sadie rescues a sheep in a snowstorm, Angus can’t bear that she’s praised. Incongruously—since until this point the dogs have been minimally anthropomorphized—Angus disrupts Sadie’s training by barking, “stay!” when Mister says “come!” All ends well when Angus does well at trials and Missus has a baby. Sweet, with more depth than is usual in such stories, despite the dogs’ unevenly human behavior. (Fiction. 8-10)