Book Review: Scout Hits the Trail (with CD)

Scout Hits the Trail, by Liam O'Donnell (Soundprints, 2008, $4.95, 32pp PB, ages 4-8, preschool to grade 2), a Pet Tales book, with assistance from the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA)

Do you remember how, when you were a kid, you had one or two read-along books and took them everywhere you went? You would look at the story and listen to it being read just for you. Maybe that's even the way you learned to read! Or, pretended to.

Soundprints has published a wonderful story, approved by the AVMA, about a  yellow labrador retriever named Scout and who goes on a hike with his family. Everyone carries something, even Scout. After lunch, Scout saves the day but, just how, will be revealed not by me but by reading and listening to Scout Hits the Trail.

Inspired by a real dog, Scout is also depicted with appropriate body language in illustrations that seem almost to be photographs, and not only is there a glossary in the back but also a page about taking care of your dog - in the heat of summer, with an ID collar and leash on at all times, and advice about not interacting with wild animals.

Definitely a book to use daily - and keep!

Book Review: Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About (dog rescue, young woman in NYC coming of age)

Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About, by Isabel Klee (HarperCollins, 2026, 288pp HB, $19.60)

This review is here because the word, Dogs, comes before the word, Boys, in the title! And because we have put it on your To Read List for 2026. A warm, funny, inspirational book, Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About is a book you will race through, hardly believing it could be true but loving it nevertheless.

Our heroine, Isabel, has lived many lives before she is 30 - lived in many apartments with many roommates and boys, fostered many dogs, spent many nights partying in New York City bars. . . .

A Gem of a Book

A little gem, with an added bonus that I didn't notice until about chapter 5 are the faint outlines of a dog at the top of each chapter. I wondered if their breed might foretell something about the content of the chapter but I didn't want to take the time  to analyze the possible connection. Suffice it to say that perhaps the drawings did, perhaps they didn't.

And I would suggest  paying attention to not the chapter titles as much as the months and years preceding each chapter (I didn't).

Author Isabel Klee has also given us a gift in the chapter on losing a pet and how it differs from losing a parent or other close someone. "When you lose a dog, it's impossible to imagine ever loving again. Then, one day, you stumble across another dog who needs you, and it just makes sense. . . choosing the inevitable heartbreak that comes at the end of a dog's life. They were going into it knowing how much it would hurt one day and doing it anyway. Because the loss is excruciating; there's no way around it. But the in-between is pure magic." (p. 169)

And the Story is. . . . 

The author is dog-crazy and searching for love in the Bog City. She also has a great day job with dogs. And, she fosters dogs with issues and turns them around, just by being accepting - a lesson for all of us. I would love to meet her!

A party girl, her life was exhausting for me but parts of it I envied. Does she ever truly find "true love'? (apart from dogs, that is.)

Now I am ready for her next book on more canine characters and how she loved them back to physical and emotional health!

I give this book an A-. Like Kristin Hannah's, it is emotionally exhausting but I was sad when it ended.

Book Review: Magic Hour (PNW, child: lost and found)

Magic Hour, by Kristin Hannah (Ballantine Books, 432pp, 2010, $14.00)

Remember Love Story starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal back in the 70s? Remember it wasn't a love story between the two of them but between O'Neal's character and his father? 

New York Times' bestselling author Kristin Hannah's 15th novel is likewise the story of a little girl lost and found but primarily about two grown-up sisters (the reader actually likes and identifies with both of them). The older one, a cheerleader, becomes the town sheriff while the younger, quieter, studious one becomes a child psychiatrist who sort of runs into trouble and is asked to come home to help out her hometown, which she does. 

Magic Hour is also about forgiving, and growing up as adults after failed marriages and also about the questionable involvement of the media and its ability to twist events just a little. Throw in a disappearance or two, a prison sentence, and the beautiful Pacific Northwest and you may just fall in love with and read the rest of Hannah's work.

Magic Hour is a fast read but not because there is a lot of dialogue. Rather, because the story is so compelling and the pace is riveting. You may just devour it in one weekend, taking it with you wherever you go, on the chance you can read a quick chapter or two. 

Truly a love story about growing up and growing better and helping each other along the way, including the little girl who may just be the real winner after all.

Book Review: My Friends (teens, 25 years later)

My Friends, by Frederik Backman (Marble Sky Corporation, 390 pp, 2023, ages 16 and up, $19 PB)

A very unusual read from a Swedish author that might take you halfway through before you identify with the characters but the rest of the book is well worth it: your reading speed will accelerate and along the way you will guess at what happens - sometimes you will be wrong, though sometimes you will be right.

A group of 14-year-olds who are as tight as any friends (and any age) can be which astonished me, a senior citizen who tried to remember the summer when I was 14. Three boys and a girl (eventually) and how they spend their summer days together (sometimes pilfering, but always supporting each other). 

Other major characters in the book are the pier (though I would call it a dock) and the painting of three friends sitting on the end of the dock, the debut work of one whose name is revealed only near the end.

The prolific author of other books on my Must-Read list, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry (with a dog on the cover) and Beartown, Frederik Backman has a very unusual style of writing. Like many others, he tells his story by going back and forth over 25 years but he also drops in a sentence here and there that are simply unforgettable gems - and these increase with frequency as the story progresses.

I only wish a reading guide had been included with questions for book clubs but, no doubt, this book will be studied for a long time.

Book Review: A Dog's Gotta Do What a Dog's Gotta Do: Dogs at Work (children's book)

A Dog's Gotta Do What a Dog's Gotta Do: Dogs at Work, by Marilyn Singer (Scholastic, 2000, 96pp, ages 7-10, grades 4-6, $6.25)

I just couldn't pass up this book once I saw the title: A Dog's Gotta Do What a Dog's Gotta Do, and the cover photo of a golden retriever bringing in the newspaper.

Each of the seven chapters starts with an incredible one-paragraph, one-page story of a real dog, followed by several pages of non-fiction facts and stories about dogs in the same 'occupation' as the theme for that chapter, such as military working dogs, livestock guarding dogs, scenting dogs and therapy dogs, seeing eye dogs, avalanche and sled dogs, TV and movie dogs and even the dog on the Titanic who saved many lives!

Although written as if it could be read quickly in one sitting, it is so full of different facts that the reader would do better to go through it chapter by chapter. And, of course, dog-ear the pages that resonate most - even have a competition among the family members as to which dog jobs are their favorite or which dogs they think do the most incredible unbelievable jobs!

With so many different things a dog can do, each dog has its specialty. This makes for a riveting discussion with your young reader about valuing each dog, each person, for something.

Book Review: Bugs (OT)(Oh, what a gem!)

Bugs, by Nancy Parker and Joan Wright (Harper Collins, ages 3-8, $6.99, 1987, 40pp, a Reading Rainbow book of 44 titles)

OK, so I broke my rule of not considering books that are old. Especially if they are research tomes, I usually limit them to the past five years. This is not research, however, therefore, I can allow myself to go back further, even to 1987 because Bugs is simply that good!

Many authors attempt to write in rhyme, albeit unsuccessfully. Author Nancy Parker, however, not only succeeds in rhyming but makes the rhymes make sense and flow into each other. She poses a question about an insect, then answers it with both lines rhyming. It must have taken a long long time to come up with such colorful matches! And her descriptions on the facing page have just the right amount of biological information - size, gender, stage of life, and ending with geographic location.

The final page is written more for the adults in the room with a bibliography and taxonomy, preceded by a few pages of a picture glossary for the younger ones.

We generally donate the books post-review, but this one is a keeper! With 16 bugs!

Book Review: The Tenth Good Thing about Barney (cat passes away)

The Tenth Good Thing about Barney, by Judith Viorst (Simon and Schuster, $16.99HB, ages 5-9, grades 1-4, 32pp)

Judith Viorst's books have stood the test of time and even though this one is nearly 40 years old and one that some of us grew up with, it will last and our grandchildren will learn from it about their best friend.

With lovely understated drawings of the story, The Tenth Good Thing About Barney is a book to read over and over again. And just like the boy in the book who cries before falling asleep, I know some children who will take this to bed with them, read it and look at the pictures and remember their best friend for many nights.

On a lighter note, the name Barney could bring up pictures of a dog as well as a cat as in Viorst's story.

In a nutshell, the boy can quickly come up with nine good things about his cat who passed away but he gets stuck trying to think of a tenth. It is not until he dad plants a seed that the boy can think of a tenth. And the ending will stay with the young reader forever.