Straydog

Rating:
Summary: Refreshingly different!
Review: I thought this book was very well written. It is about this girl who is angry and feels trapped, and with no friends at all. She then befriends a collie mix at the animal shelter were she works. But the dog is feral and she has to try and teach the dog (which she named Grrl, sort of like a growl or the way she is feeling)to trust again, but in doing so she has broken out of her own cage and looks at the world and the people in it a different way. It is a very touching story about trust, faith, and courage. Showing the reader to belive and keep going, no matter how over grown the path or how the way may seem flodded or untouchable, that some day it will all come together and the sun will come shining through to reveal a a kinder much better way through the twisted and some what scary path of life. Keep believing don't hide who you are, because your true character will be found. I hope that people who enjoy a good book and likes these stories will pick this up and read it.

Oh and if you are wondering why my title is the way it is, because my cat had stepped on the keyboard and so that came up, I don't know how but it has meaning to it. Thank you.

Rating:
Summary: 132+
Review: I thought this book was very well written. It is about this girl who is angry and feels trapped, and with no friends at all. She then befriends a collie mix at the animal shelter were she works. But the dog is feral and she has to try and teach the dog (which she named Grrl, sort of like a growl or the way she is feeling)to trust again, but in doing so she has broken out of her own cage and looks at the world and the people in it a different way. It is a very touching story about trust, faith, and courage. Showing the reader to belive and keep going, no matter how over grown the path or how the way may seem flodded or untouchable, that some day it will all come together and the sun will come shining through to reveal a a kinder much better way through the twisted and some what scary path of life. Keep believing don't hide who you are, because your true character will be found. I hope that people who enjoy a good book and likes these stories will pick this up and read it.

Oh and if you are wondering why my title is the way it is, because my cat had stepped on the keyboard and so that came up, I don't know how but it has meaning to it. Thank you.

Rating:
Summary: Koja strikes again.
Review: Kathe Koja, Straydog (FSG, 2002)

Over the course of my existence I've read somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand books. While I am one of those people who will start sniffling at the merest hint of decently-rendered emotion in a movie, and bawl like a baby when certain songs come on the radio, I've never been that way with books. With reflection, I've been able to think of three books that reduced me to tears while reading them (Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows, Kathe Koja's Strange Angels, and Clive Barker's Sacrament). Add a fourth to the list: Kathe Koja's newest offering, the short novel Straydog.

Marketed as a young adult title (but those of us who know Koja's writing know better), Straydog is the story of a high school outcast, Rachel, who volunteers at an animal shelter while not at school. She develops a bond with a feral collie brought into the shelter one day. While writing a short story to submit to a competition, she begins to identify with the dog to an almost supernatural degree.

Koja's writing is, as always, dead on in its ability to capture and explain the essence of the outcast in society. Anyone who was part of a fringe group during high school should be able to well identify with Rachel's words, and more importantly with her actions as she's thrust into unfamiliar situations. Straydog explores adolescent coming of age in a way few books have, and shines in so doing.

As usual where Koja is concerned, there is no comparison that gives a good understanding, no way to recommend the book based on anything you've already read; Koja is still too far out on the bleeding edge for that, with a style that approaches poetry in places and the same strong undercurrent of classic surrealism that runs its way through almost all of her work. (The only book I was put in mind of while reading this is Ursula LeGuin's novel Very Far Away from Anywhere Else.)

A shoo-in for the ten-best list this year, and will probably be at its pinnacle. *****

Rating:
Summary: A great read
Review: Straydog is a great book if you need to have a quick read. I enjoyed it the whole way i was reading it. I recomend it to poeple that are animals lovers and maybe work or help out at an animal shelter. The book can inspire someone to maybe save a animals life at the shelter or off the street. This book is a great book and i loved it the whole way. It is sad, inserational, and happy all at the same time!

Rating:
Summary: Great read
Review: Straydog is a great read and it was a fun and quick read. I loved and also enjoyed it all the way through it. I recomend it to poeple that love animals and also maybe help out at shelters with animals. Myabe this book might also save an animals life in somehow. It might inspire someone. This book was great!

Rating:
Summary: Dog's eye view
Review: The protagonis is a girl named Rachle.The conflict is Rachle works parttime in a petstore and one sertin collie mix she names grrl goes crazy every time she goes a round her.

Rachel falls in love with grrl the dog, and they will learn to trust each other. A boy named Griffin thinks of a plan to take grrl home. Grrl isn't the only one she has to learn to trust.

This is a great action-packed book for boys and girls of all ages.

Rating:
Summary: Great read
Review: Wow! An incredible book! It's been a couple years since I read a book that REALLY socked me emotionally like this one did. I'm a dog lover, but also a teacher of 8th graders. The school scenes and isolation felt by Rachel, the main character, were very realistic, sad to say. Woven through the story is the thread about Rachel writing a piece for submission to a contest. The style of this piece, from the straydog's perspective, is very creative - a real lesson for kids in voice and style. I plan to use this as a read-aloud come fall, but I know for sure I'll have to let them read silently at a couple key points because there is no way I could get through those parts without crying, and I don't just mean a tear or two! If you teach middle schoolers or above, if you love dogs, if you love a book that really touches your heart, buy this book immediately. It really will be on my top ten list, and I have read HUNDREDS of young adult novels.

Rating:
Summary: On my top ten list
Review: Wow! An incredible book! It's been a couple years since I read a book that REALLY socked me emotionally like this one did. I'm a dog lover, but also a teacher of 8th graders. The school scenes and isolation felt by Rachel, the main character, were very realistic, sad to say. Woven through the story is the thread about Rachel writing a piece for submission to a contest. The style of this piece, from the straydog's perspective, is very creative - a real lesson for kids in voice and style. I plan to use this as a read-aloud come fall, but I know for sure I'll have to let them read silently at a couple key points because there is no way I could get through those parts without crying, and I don't just mean a tear or two! If you teach middle schoolers or above, if you love dogs, if you love a book that really touches your heart, buy this book immediately. It really will be on my top ten list, and I have read HUNDREDS of young adult novels.

Rating:
Summary: Stray dog
Review: You know, I'm not a big fan of Kathe Koja, despite having read most of her works. Her subject matter and writing style usually rub me the wrong way, like in "Skin" and "Strange Angels," too books I very much disliked. However, "Straydog" is a much stronger and different work.

Koja eschews her usual over-the-top melodrama for a more restrained tale that resonates very strongly in truth. 'Straydog" is about a very cynical high school girl named Rachel who doesn't like much in life besides taking care of animals and writing. She isn't full of self-pity though, she's a sharply sarcastic and biting one, full of life. She meets a dog who animal officials at the shelter she works at declare is a lost cause, much too violent, but she is determined to rehabilitate it and upon the encouragement of her teacher, decides to write about the process through the dog's point of view. She also meets an outsider, a boy named Griffin, who helps her in this task.

The whole "story within a story" aspect of this slim book works very well, and each level is written smartly and with a minimum of flashy, unnecessary pretenses by Koja. There are very smart viewpoint and tone changes from the book Koja is writing to when it becomes the passages that Koja is writing that Rachel is writing through the view of the dog. A very clean transition that makes the whole thing believable.

To sum up my feelings, this book doesn't really hit any of the false notes that many of Koja's other works do, and I think it has something pretty useful to impart to all of its readers, not always the same for each reader. I would definitely recommend this book, it's a quick and smart read.