Strudel's Forever Home

February 15, 2016
A loyal, playful, and opinionated dachshund adjusts to a new home after losing his human in an incident he cannot remember. The story is told from the point of view of the dog, named Strudel by the Philadelphia shelter that initially takes him in. At the shelter, Strudel meets a fifth-grader named Jake, who reads him adventure stories from a book called Chief, Dog of the Old West and ultimately adopts him. Jake's house is full of chaos--there's tension between Jake and the older sister he's nicknamed "Mutanski," forgotten meals and walks, and Jake's mom's demanding, easily provoked boyfriend, Arnie--and both Strudel and the humans adapt slowly but discernibly. Meanwhile, Jake does dangerous "favors" for a neighborhood bully, and a gang of cats menaces Strudel when he's left outside during the day. The multiple plotlines keep the story moving quickly, and each--including the mystery of Strudel's separation from his original owner--is satisfyingly resolved. Strudel's perspective vacillates between true to dog nature (exchanging pee "messages" with other neighborhood dogs) and not at all: he mistakes a garden hose for a rattlesnake in part because it is green (real dogs don't perceive color that way) and, more distressingly, dislikes chocolate but suffers no apparent consequences from eating it, despite its notorious toxicity to dogs. Overall, a winning and sometimes-harrowing story of a dog and his many families. (Fiction. 9-12)

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February 1, 2016

Gr 3-5-Everyone has troubles-both humans and animals. Arne is too bossy and reeks of cigarettes, a mom deals with management worries, a boy gets pushed into doing bad deeds by a neighborhood bully, cats lose their homes and become feral, and a dog gets spooked by thunder and runs away. These myriad issues overlap and somehow become problems for one little dachshund to solve in Freeman's latest novel for younger middle grade readers. Jake, a struggling reader, practices reading aloud at an animal shelter. There he meets Strudel, who likes the book Chief, Dog of the Old West as much as Jake. Though the work is about rustlers and stampedes and Jake's milieu is completely urban, Strudel imagines himself as Jake's canine sidekick. Jake eventually adopts the little dog, and the two become a team. Jake needs all the help he can get when a neighborhood bully talks him into committing petty crimes for cash. Strudel has his own troubles when a band of feral cats demand that he give up his food. Some problems get solved, while others are left hanging-perhaps due to the fact that the tale is told from the dog's point of view. Strudel is an admirable canine pal who tries to help Jake make the right decisions. Jake, on the other hand, doesn't always own up to his bad deeds. It's unusual to find a children's book in which the good guy turns out to be the dog while the human is left wanting. VERDICT Give this to kids who like stories told from the animal's perspective.-Lillian Hecker, Town of Pelham Public Library, NY

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2016
Grades 3-7 Dachshund Strudel is not sure how he ended up in a shelter. He makes a friend in an older dog named Maisie, but he still wonders what happened to his former owner. Maisie advises him to look forward, not back, and stay true to his hound nature. When a young boy named Jake comes to the shelter to read to a dog, on his teacher's orders, he and Strudel are paired. Strudel loves hearing the stories of Chief, Dog of the Old West, and hopes it's forever when Jake brings him home from the shelter. But Strudel doesn't always do everything right: he destroys a garden hose, thinking it is a rattlesnake, and is always getting underfoot of Arnie, Jake's mom's boyfriend. Still, his protective instincts might not be entirely off base. Told from the dog's point of view, this is a story of a dog that needs a familyand the family who needs him back. Readers will cheer for this small dog with a big heart and dreams to match.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)