Customer Reviews

The Starlight Barking

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For those of you who loved Pongo, Misses, Perdita, Prince, and the rest of the Dalmation gang of the original book, this sequel is a welcome journey back to the "Dalmation Plantation" once known as Hell Hall.

More science fiction in nature than the original, The Starlight Barking takes place a year or two after the original. The fifteen pupies have grown up, with the Cadpig even taking the Prime Minister as her "pet". It's been a tranquil time for Pongo and his Misses. Tranquil, that is, until one morning when their pets fail to wake up, doors open on their own for the dogs, and they even find that they can fly.

Their search for answers take them to Number 10 Downing Street where Prime Minister Cadpig and Pongo, along with all dogdom, receive a message from across space. It is Siruis, the Dog Star, who has come to offer the canines of Earth an eternity of Bliss if only they will come with him, leaving Earth and humankind behind.

The dogs' loyalty is put to the test. Will they leave man and Earth forever, dooming humans to a world without dogs? Or will they remain and live in a world filled with cruelty and the possibility of nuclear war?

The Starlight Barking doesn't quite live up to the original, but still makes for a good yarn. Most of the elements of a good story are there, and it is nice to see some of the characters expanded upon from 101 Dalmations, including Cadpig and Roly Poly.

I read this book in a single day, and was left with the wish that Dodie Smith would again write another sequel.

I would definately recommend this book for those of you who liked the original.

This was an amazing book. When I first started reading it, I wondered about some changes in the story compared to Disney's Movie. I think it was not good for Disney to change the story, and love the Starlight Barking much better than Disney's sequel, 102 Dalmations. It was cool to see that dogs could fly, open doors, and talk long-distance (with out paying extra!) I love this fantisy, but I think that Sirus should have let them have one special day like this every year and get to visit them. I certanly wouldn't mind sleeping in so that dogs could have fun. Once I dreamed that there were 20 books in the series, and that me and my friend tried to buy them all. I wish there really were 20 books.

This sequel to THE 101 DALMATIANS is somewhat different from its predecessor. In THE 101 DALMATIANS, the dogs (give or take their varying talents for understanding human speech and even writing) had the limitations of real dogs - they had a great deal of difficulty in communicating complicated ideas to humans, they were hampered by the lack of hands to open doors, and so on. In other words, while the first book had dogs who understood everything that was going on, it wasn't exactly a fantasy.

Here, the first thing that happens on the fine summer day on which the story begins, when Pongo and Missis wake in their human pets' room at Hell Hall, is that they begin learning that a lot of their normal limitations have mysteriously vanished. None of the dogs are hungry (amazing in itself with so many young mothers and puppies on the premises), doors and gates mysteriously open whenever the dogs need to get into or out of a place, and they can move much faster than usual. But these changes are accompanied by frightening events - the Dearlys and even the Persian cats are sleeping normally and even smiling in their sleep, but will not wake.

Pongo meets with the General (formerly a Colonel), who as a working sheepdog on a nearby farm is very practiced at organization and strategy, to find that the unbreakable sleep seems to have affected *all* living creatures other than dogs. They are soon contacted by Cadpig, the youngest of the Pongos' first litter, who alone chose to get a pet of her own - by tagging along on one of Mr. Dearly's consultations with the government to help deal with the national debt, she got her dearest wish of being on television by becoming the Prime Minister's pet. That in itself is a good story - the poor man was so touched by her display of obvious affection for him when most people had nothing nice to say about him that he was glad to have her. She improved his approval ratings so much that most high-ranking government officials followed suit and got dogs - and now those dogs are acting in place of their sleeping humans to direct the country, so that Cadpig is acting as Prime Minister and trying to keep all the dogs calm and figure out what's going on - and she asks her father to join her in London as an adviser. (Her mother, unasked, also gives her some sound advice - while Missis may not be as intellectual as Pongo, she has good sense and good instincts, while Cadpig is so bossy that she goes overboard at trying to organize things.)

The core cast of THE 101 DALMATIANS quickly reassembles, as Prince and Perdita are left to look after the Dearlys and the Pongos take their now-grown first litter with them to London. (It's a pity that Prince isn't much developed as a character, but Perdita's homelessness in early youth left its mark, and leaving the two of them at Hell Hall makes the cast in this book track that of the previous book more closely.) The cats from the first book and even young Tommy, the General's particular pet human, eventually wake up and join in, although all the other creatures remain asleep - this is put down to their having been made honorary dogs. (Tommy is particularly interested - although he's still very young, he's greatly interested in science fiction.)

About three quarters of the book is spent travelling through this world effectively populated only by dogs - dealing with traffic problems in London as so many dogs try to get around (even when they can effectively fly, the crowding causes problems) and watching the canine cabinet trying to get a grip on the crisis. (This is a particularly nice bit of irony, as none of the dogs or even their humans have been in danger, even though strange things have been going on.) Only in the last quarter of the book are the dogs made aware of *why* these things have been happening to them, and given a choice about deciding what kind of a world they really want to live in and where their loyalties lie.

This book is a good sequel to the very well known "The 101 Dalmations." It's interesting that many have read the first book but not the second and that's a shame. What's new about this book is that it focuses on the supernatural when dogs can fly and all the people are asleep. It's not for everyone though as some might be put off by it's new age style. If you've read the first book this is worth a look.

You feel like you are inside the book, you can feel the night air in London. And the characters from the first book are not compromised. They are consistent, familiar and real, the people (alright, dogs) we know completely recognisable. Dodie Smith is a genius.

In this book she acquaints us with the grown-up lives of the Dalmatian puppies, but we find ourselves reacquainting ourselves with them the way we might at a family reunion. It would have been so easy to write a cloying sequel with those same later lives, instead we have an absorbing mystery, full of wonder, with Dodie Smith's created world familiar but altered.

Gorgeous. Brilliant. Genius. I said genius, didn't I? Genius.

anyone who was a fan of the original story of 101 Dalmations (the one by Dodie Smith) will know this book. it's been out of print for many years, but some smart person got it re-issued. to that person, I owe a great deal of thanks. I've been looking for it for years. and finally, here it is. great story that I loved as a kid, and still love all these years later. very cool and magical.

A couple of weeks ago I finally read "The Starlight Barking" by Dodie Smith. "101 Dalmations" was a huge favourite of mine when I was young, but I never even knew the book had a sequel until a few years ago---and have only now gotten around to reading the sequel.

I read "101 Dalmations" over and over again when I was a kid; I just loved that book. Heck, I also enjoyed the Disney animated version of the story, though I was sorry the plot deviated from the novel so much. (The less said about the more recent live-action film version of 101 Dalmations, the better. Man, whose idiotic idea was it for the dogs NOT to talk in the film? Glenn Close was a lot of fun to watch as Cruella DeVil, but other than that, I thought the film was a disaster.)

So, I certainly was pre-disposed to enjoy "The Starlight Barking." However.... I'm not sure what to say about it. It seemed very short compared to the original book, but it's been quite some time since I read the original, so perhaps they're not all that different in page count. The two books certainly are different in content, however. Apart from the conceit that dogs and other animals can all talk to one another in a sort of animal language that humans don't understand, the original book is a straightforward mystery/adventure story. The sequel, on the other hand, is the wildest sort of fantasy. I think I can allow a slight spoiler here and say that the dogs learn very early in the story that they can fly. This really wasn't what I was expecting from the book, I suppose! But more than that, somehow I didn't find the plot all that engaging. Plus, from a logical point of view, I did have a problem with the ending, which I can't really discuss without giving the whole thing away.

The entire book certainly was odd. I'm wondering if perhaps I've finally gotten too old for this sort of story? As I said earlier, I haven't read the original book for quite some time, so I don't know what I would think of it if I came to it for the first time as an adult. Oh, this book wasn't bad at all, but not really my thing, I suppose. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who read and enjoyed the first book, simply because you'll want to know what else Dodie Smith dreamed up for her dogs. And if you haven't read "101 Dalmations" yet, give that one a try!

One nice thing about "The Starlight Barking" is that the illustrations (very nicely done) are by Janet and Anne Grahame Johnstone, who also illustrated the original book. So, the two go together well as a set.

This novel does not have the brilliance of the original book but is an adequate sequal. The plot tends to be a bit mystical and readers may sometimes feel the author is trying to be humourous and serious at the same time, (to the novels detriment). The plot revolves around the idea that all life on earth has fallen into a mysterious sleep except for dogs who must now try to understand what has happened and cope with the consequences. The book is a good sequal but may confuse readers not familiar with the original story.

This is the sequel to the famous and fun book '101 Dalmations', and though some of the characters come back, it's a quite different story.

One day, all the dogs in the world wake up to find that everyone is asleep except dogs, though later also two cats and a young human boy, who are 'official' dogs.

The dogs are not hungry, and they can open doors, fly, and do just about anything they want. Pongo and Missis try to find out what has happened, and one of their first suspects is Cruella de Ville. Cruella is around, but she is asleep and selling 'clothes that clank' with her husband, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the mysterious sleeping.

Pongo and Perdita `swoosh' (fly) over to london to meet with their daughter, Cadpig who belongs to the prime minister.

Cadpig seems to be the main character; she is the one who did almost not live at birth (in the Disney movie this is Lucky, but in the book Lucky is the one who has spots in the shape of a horseshoe).

After many attempts to find out what is wrong, they solve the mystery and must face a decision that could change the nature of the very world.

When Pongo,( an intelligent, Handsome Male Dalmatian) Missis (A Pretty, and very metaphysical Female Dalmatian) and Cadpig ( The Pretty, Metaphysical, Intelligent Daughter of Pongo and Missis) wake up one morning and Find their 'pets' unwakeable, they imeadiatly wonder what's wrong. On their way to find out, they discover such things as how to 'Swoosh', a sort of way to hover,"High Swoosh", which is basicallly flying, and how to do things by just thinking about it. When they get a mysterious message from a bodiless voice,they tell the dogs of England to meet a Trafalgar Square at Midnight. When they do discover the reason behind all this, they Are Horrified!