A Farm for Maisie is the third title in the Sweet Pea & Friends series. These books by John and Jennifer Churchman tell the story of their farm and the animals that live there. Each story is told from the viewpoint of the animals. Their humanistic thoughts, feelings and fears come together within the text and photographs. The first, Sweet Pea & Friends is The Sheepover. It was a big hit at my bookstore. The customers like the sweet, fanciful story of animals and what […]
The Dog World: Politics, Crazy, and Fluff
Show Dog is a nonfiction work by Josh Dean that takes the reader on a journey through a year of living like a show dog. By show dog I am referring to the archetypal dog shows known as confirmation shows. I must confess first of all that I came to this book as someone who has been in and out of the dog world for most of my life, and probably most importantly for this particular book someone who has owned Australian Shepherds and considers myself a […]
Pet Bereavement Counselors Have Problems Too
Meg Brennan has recently relocated from Philadelphia to San Francisco and has started up a business as a pet bereavement counselor. However, as is often the case with those in the counseling field, she is struggling with her own issues. Her beloved dog, Toby, died not long after she arrived in California and since then Meg has found herself unable to leave the house. She has managed to hide this from her best friend (and landlord) who lives upstairs thanks to the magic of ordering […]
Big skies, big animals, big threats
By the time I started reading Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, I had forgotten what it was about, and I’m glad I had because otherwise, I would have had my defensives up. I added it to my library queue after reading badkittyuno’s review last month. Cannonball Read: the system works. There’s not much I can add here. badkittyuno did a killer job summarizing the experience of the read, and the broad strokes of the story that Alexander Fuller tells. It’s a memoir of […]
Darn Hooch
This is the fourth book in the Sweet Pepper Fire Brigade series by JJ Cook. The story centers around fire chief Stella Griffin, some ghosts and a hooch war. By the way, that’s hooch as in moonshine, not any of the other terms you might be thinking of (money, female private parts, a loose woman, a scuzzy man or half of a K-9/cop duo). There’s also some stereotypical small town stuff (romance or the lack thereof, family issues, politics, misogyny and food) to round out […]
This is not your father’s Lassie…
I embarked on reading Edgar, knowing only that it was a story about “a boy and his dog”. In fact, in the author’s own words: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a boy and his dog story for grownups. If I were looking for this book, the way I once did, that’s all I would want to know. Hide the dust jacket away. Don’t look at it again until you close the book for the last time. Read the blurbs afterward, like I do, when […]