Book Review: Shadow (foster pup, guide dog, boys, girls)

Shadow (The Puppy Place series #3 - Where Every Puppy Finds a Home)*, by Ellen Miles (Scholastic, 2009, 71 pages, $3.99, ages 7-10, grades 2-5)

Along Comes Shadow

The fourth-grade is reading about Helen Keller in school so Lizzie practices being blind at home. She and her younger brother Charles are dog-crazy, along with younger brother Bean who pretends to be a dog. Begging for a full-time dog of their own, they have had to resort to only fostering other dogs a couple of times.

And then - along comes Shadow, their new foster puppy, a 9-week-old smart-as-the-dickens black lab.

After Shadow saves little Bean from falling down the stairs, the kids jot down a list of characteristics the puppy’s new family must have before they give him away (they would never sell him), like a big yard and at least one little kid like the Bean.

We also hear from Shadow (a couple of paragraphs in each chapter) – that he likes kisses and hugs** and especially little boys, and food, of course, and attention.

Friends

Lizzie would love a best friend like her brother Charles has, if they can’t have a dog. Maria is a girl in school who seems to know so much about dogs, but Lizzie is the one always talking in Morning Meeting (and interrupting Maria) about how smart Shadow is.

One day, Maria’s mother comes to Morning Meeting (like Show and Tell) with her guide dog!

And would you believe the two girls become best friends as they spend time together convincing the guide dog school what a good guide dog Shadow would be. The only problem is that Shadow must then go to another family who will raise him. Are they willing to give him up to become a guide dog?

*The Puppy Place series is delightful (and short), appealing to both boys and girls.. The same family, not ready for a full-time dog, ends up fostering dogs and finding them forever homes and it is the children who manage to do such a super job at this!

**Although author Miles relates modern, excellent advice about dogs, not many dogs like kisses and hugs like Shadow does so children should not try this. In addition, we now use the term, housetraining, rather than the old-fashioned, housebreaking.