Book Review: A Home for Goddesses and Dogs (new girl, two dogs, Connecticut farm, fitting in)

 A Home for Goddesses and Dogs, by Leslie Connor (Harper Collins, 385 pages, 2020, $16.99, ages 10-12, grades 5-6)

An intriguing title and cover of the new book by the award-winning author of The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle, A Home for Goddesses and Dogs made for a book we didn't want to miss. We love the cover - a house on a hill (Pinnacle Hill Farm) with silhouettes of two women and a dog, trees, a car and shed, with several moons above as they change phase day by day, and, in the foreground, a young blond girl kneeling and petting a yellow dog. So much to tell!

A long book and slow-reading but, fortunately, with fairly large print.

Goddesses

What are goddesses anyway - are they really the photos that Lydia and her mom 'improve'? Are they Aunt Brat, her wife and Lydia? Maybe Lydia's two new girl friends? 

The Plot?

Rather plotless until way way into the book, but, nonetheless, the story of a young girl whose father left the family years ago and whose mother recently died goes to live with Aunt Brat and the aunt's wife - and a grandfatherly person and an old dog. Chelmsford is a small town in Connecticut with only a dozen students in Lydia's 8th grade class. Within a week, they get a yellow dog but our hero, Lydia, is not a dog person.

She brings a box of goddesses with her to the farm in Connecticut. Goddesses are cut-out photos of women that Lydia and her mother improved with paint and crayons and lace and names like the Goddess of Three Hearts and the Goddess of Spring Planting.

The Meaning of Family

Lydia enlarges a mouse hole in the wall of her upstairs bedroom and then falls through the floor. The new dog has to undergo expensive surgery. Both incidents, and more, show family values in action.

And, with dogs in the picture, DogEvals must comment on how they are depicted. Housetraining is drawn out unnecessarily and not correctly but, otherwise, the dogs are real dogs.

And Secrets

"I hadn't hidden it from her. . . Was not telling her the same thing as keeping it from her? Or was it choosing not to share? Was there a difference?" (page 257)

Writing Style

Like many books for elementary and junior high students, this book is very slow from chapter to chapter; however, author Leslie Connor writes very well on a micro level and every once in a while the reader comes across a gem of a sentence or paragraph. It is a long book and we would have preferred more action or a shorter read. 

Caveat: This book is available in the Howard County public library system.