Amazing! You'll laugh & cry.

Adventure

I've seen many posts on discussion groups from parents asking plaintively, there are so many boy-and-his-dog stories but where are the girl-and-her-dog stories? This book can make everyone happy. Due to the vicissitudes of a greyhound's life, Best Mate is a boy's best friend, and then Brighteyes gladdens the heart of a young girl who saves his life, and finally Paddywack is an old man's companion and helps him mount a protest to save the old-age home where his wife lived out her last years. This story has so many twists and turns. Highly recommended for children who love animal stores, and for adults who used to be children who loved animal stories. ( )

Born to Run isn't so much a novel as it is three short stories, all centered around the same dog.
Patrick rescues some greyhound puppies that have been tossed in the canal to drown. His parents allow him to adopt one of them. But one day, a couple of years on, Best Mate, his dog is out at the park running late at night and disappears. Because...
He'd been dognapped to sell to a cruel dog racing enthusiast. Craig races dogs and bets on dogs, but he doesn't really ~like~ dogs. That's left to his 15-year old stepdaughter Becky. But when she learns the fate of Craig's racing dogs after they stop winning, she takes Brighteyes (Best Mate's new name) and runs away from home. Life on the streets is hard, and eventually she is seriously injured. When taken to the hospital, Brighteyes keeps a constant vigil by the hospital's doors, where he meets Old Joe, who works a food truck. Becky recovers, but can't keep a dog where her mother is taking them after leaving Craig, so...
Old Joe takes in the greyhound, now named Paddywhack, to live with him on a barge in the canal. They spend a time sitting a vigil outside an old folks home scheduled to be closed, but after it's saved, they are off on the barge to live wherever life takes them.
This felt like a book without much of a point. The dog is a key plot element to all three stories, but his personality is never fully developed beyond just being a "good dog." Patrick, Becky and Old Joe are all pretty one-dimensional characters too. Becky's story is the most compelling, as she runs away from home and learns how hard life on the streets is. Neither Patrick nor Old Joe learn anything or develop in any way as a result of the events in their story. ( )

Michael Morpurgo's BORN TO RUN is a sweetly moving tale of a greyhound and his three different "lives" and the three people who love him - a little boy, a teenage girl and an old widower. It's a book for kids, probably in the 9 to 12 age group, and as such is a moving and beautifully written little book. And children will appreciate the simple black and white illustrations by Michael Foreman scattered througout the narrative. The voice of the story alternates from a third person omniscient narrator and the thoughts and 'voice' of the dog. I wouldn't call this device entirely successful, but it works reasonably well, despite the somewhat awkward 'humanizing' of the canine experience.

Kids will appreciate the insights into other people's lives shown here, and may learn something from the dysfunctional, broken family life of the teen girl Becky; the cruelties often associated with dog racing; and the loneliness that older people can often feel.

I'm an old guy, more than fifty years removed from this book's target audience, but I liked it. It was a quick and enjoyable read and I'd recommend it highly to the pre-teen reading audience. ( )