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Loading... Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience schoolby Mark Teague
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. A fun book in which a wire fox terrier, Ike La Rue, is sent to obedience school after ruining Mrs. La Rue's coat. Ike writes letters home detailing the horrible conditions at the school. Color pictures juxtapose reality with Ike's melodramatic descriptions. Fun, fun, fun. ( )This dog is hilarious trying to get out of attending obedience camp. This book is about a dog named Ike who is sent to obedience school by his owner, Mrs. LaRue. Ike sens her letters trying to explain that he isn't a bad dog. He decides to escape and wander for a while. He finally comes back just in time to save his owner. I didn't like this book. If you have to take a dog to obedience school you should go with them. That's what we did with our dog. Plus there isn't really any real reason or purpose or lesson in this book. After reading this book to a classroom I might have the children write letters to their parents talking about what they think about school. About a dog living it up at obedience spa, er, school, writing dire, jailbird letters home. Funny, silly, with juxatposed color illustrations of reality and black and white "prison" conditions. Ike LaRue is a misunderstood dog, incredibly loyal and brave he is being sent off to obedience school because he accidentally ripped Mrs. LaRue favorite coat. Read what happens to him at Brotweiler Academy. 0.033 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0439206634, Hardcover)A clever book for a clever dog, Dear Mrs. LaRue collects a series of guilt-inducing letters sent home by the cat-chasing, chicken-pie-eating Ike to his "cruel" owner Mrs. LaRue, whom he hopes will come to her senses and spring him from obedience school.Desperate to come home, Ike shows great enthusiasm for stretching the truth about his treatment at Brotweiler Canine Academy. Illustrator and author Mark Teague has developed a hilariously disdainful and dignified voice for the not-very-put-upon Ike, but Teague's most cunning innovation is the book's format: He splits each spread between what's really happening, done in color, and what Ike's imagining and exaggerating to Mrs. LaRue, in big thought bubbles using dramatic black and white. As Ike delivers his first letter, in his thought bubble we see Ike carted away in the Brotweiler Canine Academy paddy wagon ("We Aim to Tame"!), up a windy road to a scary-looking quasi-Transylvanian compound, complete with lightning and bats; in full-color reality, Brotweiler looks much more like the UCLA campus in spring bloom, with a sign pointing to the sauna (on the right) and the pool (on the left). Ike's first carefully typed letter pleads, "How could you do this to me? This is a PRISON, not a school! You should see the other dogs. They are BAD DOGS, Mrs. LaRue! I do not fit in." Subsequent letters describe the staff ("The GUARDS here are all caught up in this 'good dog, bad dog' thing"), the "crimes" that landed him there ("I'd like to clear up some misconceptions about the Hibbins' cats. First, they are hardly the little angels Mrs. Hibbins makes them out to be. Second, how should I know what they were doing out on the fire escape in the middle of January? They were being a bit melodramatic, don't you think?"), and his eventual plans for escape ("I'm sorry it has come to this, since I am really a very good dog, but frankly you left me no choice"). Teague drew inspiration from a couple of sneaky dogs in his own life; kids and grownups reading Ike's tall tales might be reminded of loyal and misunderstood pooches of their own. (Ages 4 to 8) --Paul Hughes (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:02 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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