Kit 'n Kat: The Nose Knows, by Linda Steinbaum (Mascot Books, 2019, $14.95, 112 pages, ages 6-10 but probably for those in the upper ranges)
It's hard to be a kid and have to leave your two besties and move to an entirely different house and town and school. It's hard to be raised by your hippie mom after your dad dies when you are four and now you are almost a teenager and your mom marries Mark, a real toughie.
This is the situation for Kat one summer. The only bright star on her horizon is a birthday present from Mark, of all people - a trip to the shelter to pick out a dog! And so, in comes a shy yellow lab-like dog with a big nose - a very shy dog, named Kit, short for Scaredy Cat since he was returned to the shelter for being scared of everything.
When toughie Mark's colleague recommends training for Kit the dog and Kat his new daughter, he is all for it. But the training classes aren't the traditional ones he expects: they turn out to be nosework, supposedly to build up confidence in dogs. After a rocky start, Kit and Kat totally shine in class and enroll in intermediate classes and later, even private lessons.
School starts and turns out to be a lonely part of both Kat's and Kit's day and seems to drag on and on.
But then, Kit is put to the test. Can the dog win over the neighborhood and save the day?
Author Linda Steinbaum has crafted a book that all positive-reinforcement dog trainers will love. It's about time that gentle dog training had a hero and both Kit and Kat fit that bill. DogEvals' hope is that dog trainers, dog families and dog kids all over will read this book and enroll in training classes - even if they are not nosework classes.
This book deals realistically with real problems - family, moving, school, and everything else is so believable not even adults will be able to wait for Steinbaum's next book!
No comments:
Post a Comment