Let the Dog Live!

I finished a neat book today--No More Dead Dogs by Gordan Korman.

The book is a light-hearted take on a subject I've talked about recently--downer books for kids. The basic story begins when a very honest boy writes a report on a book called Old Shep, My Pal, complaining that it's boring. He also says he knew the dog in the story was going to die before he even began the book "because the dog always dies."

As luck would have it, I was reading the July/August edition of The Horn Book, which carries an advertisement for a book called Saying Goodbye to Lulu by Corinne Demas. There's a picture of a dog on the cover. Any bets as to what happens?

No More Dead Dogs is written from shifting points of view, which I feel is a little overdone in kids' books. But Korman does it well. The story really does progress as each kid is telling it. The main character gets himself into realistic trouble. The letters to Julia Roberts, which could have been sappy, aren't. The ending is both modestly unexpected and believable.

And I'm sure a lot of kids will like this book even more than I did.