From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  September 2013: (Actually published on October 8,  2013)

Rotten   by Michael Northrop  Scholastic Books (store.scholastic.com),  2013.   256 pages,  hardcover.  $17.99.

As a child I was enthralled by dog stories,  including Eric Knight’s Lassie, Come Home,  Jack London’s Call of the Wild,  and the entire Albert Payson Terhune series of books about collies. My favorite dog stories were set in different places, but had in common dog protagonists whose comfortable bourgeois lives were disrupted,  pitching them,  alone,  into a cruel outer world.  On the surface,  the stories were mainly about dogs,  but the larger message concerned the positive personal attributes that dogs can demonstrate to people.  Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  September 2013: (Actually published on October 8,  2013)

The Dog Who Danced by Susan Wilson St. Martin’s Griffin (175 Fifth Ave.,  New York,  NY  10010),  2013. 328 pages,  paperback.  $14.99.

The Dog Who Danced is not just a novel about a dog,  though it centers on a lovable Sheltie named Mack.  It’s a drama about a woman’s desperation to find her lost dog,  with twists and turns that include family turmoil,  the sting of failed relationships,  a teen’s inability to cope with his mother’s unsettled lifestyle,  and a couple’s tragic loss of their only child.  Read more