An absorbing read celebrating canine courage and heart.
Cameron once again tackles the subject he is known for: adventure-seeking dogs and the humans who love them.
Zeus, a chocolate Labrador puppy, enjoys a simple life of food, lying in the sun, chewing sticks, and playing with his mom and siblings. But one by one, the others, his mom included, leave home with new adoptive families. Only Troy and Zeus, the two largest puppies in the litter, are left when Italian American paramedic Marco Ricci from the Oahu Search and Rescue team arrives. He takes them both for testing, evaluating their abilities and courage in situations including wave pools and waterslides. When single father Marco’s 13-year-old son, Kimo, returns from his Native Hawaiian mother’s house in Indiana, Zeus immediately bonds with the boy: “Every dog has a person. This one was mine.” Training dogs for search and rescue is his business, yet Marco feels moved by his son’s love for Zeus. Additional complications arise when Bear, a dog Marco kept after he failed a critical search and rescue test and couldn’t be sold, struggles with hearing loss and depression. Written from Zeus’ first-person perspective, this novel offers fascinating details about the lives of working dogs and explores relatable themes of purpose, love, and finding family that will resonate with middle-grade dog lovers.
An absorbing read celebrating canine courage and heart. (reading group guide) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9781250815569
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Starscape/Tor
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant.
Robot Roz undertakes an unusual ocean journey to save her adopted island home in this third series entry.
When a poison tide flowing across the ocean threatens their island, Roz works with the resident creatures to ensure that they will have clean water, but the destruction of vegetation and crowding of habitats jeopardize everyone’s survival. Brown’s tale of environmental depredation and turmoil is by turns poignant, graceful, endearing, and inspiring, with his (mostly) gentle robot protagonist at its heart. Though Roz is different from the creatures she lives with or encounters—including her son, Brightbill the goose, and his new mate, Glimmerwing—she makes connections through her versatile communication abilities and her desire to understand and help others. When Roz accidentally discovers that the replacement body given to her by Dr. Molovo is waterproof, she sets out to seek help and discovers the human-engineered source of the toxic tide. Brown’s rich descriptions of undersea landscapes, entertaining conversations between Roz and wild creatures, and concise yet powerful explanations of the effect of the poison tide on the ecology of the island are superb. Simple, spare illustrations offer just enough glimpses of Roz and her surroundings to spark the imagination. The climactic confrontation pits oceangoing mammals, seabirds, fish, and even zooplankton against hardware and technology in a nicely choreographed battle. But it is Roz’s heroism and peacemaking that save the day.
Hugely entertaining, timely, and triumphant. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780316669412
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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