by Nora Raleigh Baskin
ages: 10+
First sentence: “My mother says male dogs will fight.”
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Everyone knows sixth grade is a jungle. Trying to navigate the wilds of the middle school cafeteria, the politics of homeroom, the cliques. It’s dog-eat-dog out there. And Elizabeth knows it. Especially since she’s at the bottom of the totem pole. (I just realized I’m mixing my metaphors. Sorry.) She and her single mom run a dog boarding kennel out of their home, which doesn’t earn Elizabeth any points. And while she’s talented at writing, she does, sometimes, have a tendency to exaggerate, which also doesn’t help. Which means she’s prone to bullies.

I’m going to insert here that in many ways I felt like this tried to be 13 Reasons Why for middle schoolers (with added dogs). There were multiple narrators, while we saw events over a couple of months from different vantage points. There’s another bullying incident — a boy pees on another who ends up punching the first boy — that sets things in motion for a big showdown at the end of the book. You got to see the consequences of people’s actions, the inner feelings of the bullies.

But.

It didn’t quite work. For one: the whole dog thing was a bit odd. Especially the whole “inside a dog” chapter. And while jumping between narrators usually provides insight, this time it was just kind of awkward. I wanted to be moved. I wanted to be touched. Mostly, though, I was just confused. Which makes me sad, because I have loved Baskin’s work in the past. And I wanted to love this one again.