Hank, the Cowdog: The Fling by John Erickson with
illustrations by Gerald Holmes (Puffin Books, 2001, 126 pages plus fun pages of
activities, $4.99, ages 8-12, grades 2-7) Review by Skye Anderson
Head of
Ranch Security
We, the staff here at DogEvals,
loved the first Hank book we read, Hank the
Cowdog: It’s a Dog’s Life (#3),
Who is Hank?
Hank is the smelly,
smart-alecky Head of Ranch Security (“. . . it’s a grueling job – eighteen
hours a day, sometimes twenty or even thirty. . . . The work never ends, and
sometimes I have to go days, weeks, even months without sleep. . . .I am no
ordinary dog. . . .around two A.M. Confident that my ranch would make it
through another night, I returned . . . to my office/bedroom beneath the gas
tanks.”) - on a ranch in the West Texas panhandle.
The Hank books have been
Book-of-the-Month selections - and an audio taped title won the 1993 Audie for
Outstanding Children’s Series from the Audio Publisher’s Association. Other
awards include the Oppenheimer, Wrangler, and Lamplighter awards, plus Hank now
can be read in Japanese, Spanish, Danish and even Persian Farsi.
Who is John Erickson?
Currently there are 73 Hank
books - all since 1982! That’s 73 books in 37 years or about two a year. What a
prolific storyteller!
After college, author John
Erickson, originally from Midland, Texas, worked as a cowboy, farmhand, ranch
hand and ranch manager so he knows Hank’s job well. Erickson’s page on Amazon reads like a story in itself (so entertaining we
would love to print it in its entirety here!) He wrote four hours a day while
working full-time and received only rejection letters for 15 years so, what did
he do?
Borrowed money and started
his own publishing company, of course!
His sidekick, Gerald Holmes,
drew more than a thousand figures for the Hank series before he passed away recently.
Hank’s Fling
In The Fling, we once again meet Wallace and Junior Buzzard, the unfriendly
buzzards, and Rip and Snort, the unfriendly coyotes, and Hank lives through
encounters with them once again: he ‘dodges bulletins’ (bullets)!
The scenario is as follows:
Hank mistakenly finds himself trapped in a trailer of steer headed for town
many miles away. Unfortunately, this is the same group of cattle that Hank had just
teased and tormented, so being stuck in a trailer with them for a long bumpy
ride into town is not piece of cake for this Head of Ranch Security. However,
“Part of being brave is pretending that you really are – and hoping you’ll never
have to prove it.” And so, Hank manages to survive the rickety dangerous ride into
town.
Hank’s adventures in town
include being captured by Animal Control but managing to escape after which his
antics turn into a ‘comedy of arrows’ (errors) as he tries to snaggle some hot
dogs sizzling on a grill.
But, Wait! There’s More!
And there’s more at HankTheCowdog.com including stuffies of Hank* and his side-kick Drover,
that little white stub-tailed dog whose favorite saying is, “Oh, my leg!”
(whatever that means). Hank and Drover are famous (infamous?) for their
roundabout conversations that can travel from the ballet to the moon and beyond
in just a couple of sentences. And plenty of puzzles and games for kids that
stump the grown-ups, too (also included in the books).
Now, who wants a map of
Hank’s ranch? That’s on the website, too!
---------------------------------
*Would you
like to put the Head of Ranch Security to work guarding your room, house, car
or wherever you need him to be? This
Hank can stand, sit or fight any monster that comes his way and you’ll love
having Hank hang around."
