Customer Reviews

The Gift of the Sacred Dog (Reading Rainbow Books)

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Children and adults will enjoy the colorful illustrations and tale of how the Native Americans acquired the horse. Lovely!

I want to state outright that I bought this book around twenty years ago with my allowance money when I was a young child (no more than seven). I still have it, and all those years have adored it so much that I've kept it in mint condition.

For those of you with children, that should tell you how much I loved it as a child- it's not even gotten dirty, even though I read it often.

Now that I'm older and work with children, I share the book with them, and get a great response from basically all age groups. For very young people, the bright, highly-stylized images are exciting and eye-catching. The pictures leave nothing to be desired- their detail is exquisite, and many a little one has been happy to help me find a bird or chipmunk 'hiding' somewhere in the pictures.

For older children, I use this in conjunction with Native American studies. They are interested in the story, and often mull over calling a 'horse' a 'sacred dog'.

I'm getting ahead of myself. The story is about a young man who goes and asks the Great Spirit for help when his tribe can not find/keep up with the buffalo, resulting in great hunger. The Great Spirit gives him the 'gift of the sacred dog', being horses, so that they can catch the buffalo. The people are then able to hunt, thank the buffalo and Great Spirit, and the book is over.

Now, back to my young'ns. Not only are they pleased with the story (somehow not too long or short for any age group), and the illustrations (beautiful, with just the right amount of words on a page), but they're also happy to talk about the story, which is what story time is really about for us. It's an easy story to ask questions on, and get to know the children- what they're thinking, feeling, what they believe in and don't, etc. When they don't feel like talking, I can easily point out all the colors and styles of horses in the book (some are even purple or green, among what you'd normally expect, and some are clearly showing emotion) and have the kids make pictures of what they'd like their horse to look like if they were part of the tribe. You wouldn't believe how much you can learn about a child doing that simple exercise.

For one-on-one bedtime stories, this has proven to be a good one in helping four pre-school-age children learn to read. The book seems to feel comfortable for them, and the language is not too hard to start them reading to me.

Overall, a beautiful heirloom book that I plan to pass through the family as long as I'm around. I also have THE GIRL WHO LOVED WILD HORSES, and the same applies to it.

I loved this book when I was little, and I still love it now. It's great to see that it's still around. It's a wonderful story with even better illustrations for children and adults.

My daugther loves horses and she already has another book by this author/illustrator. The pictures are incredible! This book is about a time before Native Americans had horses and how they came into their lives.

I read this when I was a child, and I loved the illustrations so much that I bought it to put into my library. I'm currently 34 so that tells you what an impact the story and the illustrations had on me.

Man, I love anything with crazy visions in the sky - particularly the first chapter of the Biblical book Ezekiel - but the vision in this book is a neat thing to read about too. I just don't get why the buffalo was referenced at the end. Must be a Native American custom to end all stories with some mentioning of a buffalo.

I'm sorry to say I still like non-sacred dogs more than sacred dogs, but I have a very good reason for doing so. Sacred dogs are much more expensive.