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.
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