Customer Reviews

Straydog

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

You know, I'm not a big fan of Kathe Koja, despite having read most of her works. Her subject matter and writing style usually rub me the wrong way, like in "Skin" and "Strange Angels," too books I very much disliked. However, "Straydog" is a much stronger and different work.

Koja eschews her usual over-the-top melodrama for a more restrained tale that resonates very strongly in truth. 'Straydog" is about a very cynical high school girl named Rachel who doesn't like much in life besides taking care of animals and writing. She isn't full of self-pity though, she's a sharply sarcastic and biting one, full of life. She meets a dog who animal officials at the shelter she works at declare is a lost cause, much too violent, but she is determined to rehabilitate it and upon the encouragement of her teacher, decides to write about the process through the dog's point of view. She also meets an outsider, a boy named Griffin, who helps her in this task.

The whole "story within a story" aspect of this slim book works very well, and each level is written smartly and with a minimum of flashy, unnecessary pretenses by Koja. There are very smart viewpoint and tone changes from the book Koja is writing to when it becomes the passages that Koja is writing that Rachel is writing through the view of the dog. A very clean transition that makes the whole thing believable.

To sum up my feelings, this book doesn't really hit any of the false notes that many of Koja's other works do, and I think it has something pretty useful to impart to all of its readers, not always the same for each reader. I would definitely recommend this book, it's a quick and smart read.

This is my absolute favorite book. Rachel is most definitely not one of those dry protagonists with no emotions or opinions, and this novel is not the typical animal rescue book, in which a girl finds a distrusting stray, takes it home, and in two weeks has trained it perfectly. It is sad, but has a powerful message and was written skillfully so that the reader goes through all the thoughts and emotions that Rachel has. This a great read for dog lovers, but also people who have yet to learn that special bond that never dies in Rachel.

This book is about a girl named Rachel and she volunteers

At an animal shelter. She meets a dog and she calls it Grr. She is sad and she doesn't have many friends so that's when she starts working at the dog pound.

She likes it and she plays with it. The next day she goes down there she helps with what she has to do and when she gets finished she gets to play with the dogs and she picks `grr'

Wow! An incredible book! It's been a couple years since I read a book that REALLY socked me emotionally like this one did. I'm a dog lover, but also a teacher of 8th graders. The school scenes and isolation felt by Rachel, the main character, were very realistic, sad to say. Woven through the story is the thread about Rachel writing a piece for submission to a contest. The style of this piece, from the straydog's perspective, is very creative - a real lesson for kids in voice and style. I plan to use this as a read-aloud come fall, but I know for sure I'll have to let them read silently at a couple key points because there is no way I could get through those parts without crying, and I don't just mean a tear or two! If you teach middle schoolers or above, if you love dogs, if you love a book that really touches your heart, buy this book immediately. It really will be on my top ten list, and I have read HUNDREDS of young adult novels.

I thought this book was very well written. It is about this girl who is angry and feels trapped, and with no friends at all. She then befriends a collie mix at the animal shelter were she works. But the dog is feral and she has to try and teach the dog (which she named Grrl, sort of like a growl or the way she is feeling)to trust again, but in doing so she has broken out of her own cage and looks at the world and the people in it a different way. It is a very touching story about trust, faith, and courage. Showing the reader to belive and keep going, no matter how over grown the path or how the way may seem flodded or untouchable, that some day it will all come together and the sun will come shining through to reveal a a kinder much better way through the twisted and some what scary path of life. Keep believing don't hide who you are, because your true character will be found. I hope that people who enjoy a good book and likes these stories will pick this up and read it.

Oh and if you are wondering why my title is the way it is, because my cat had stepped on the keyboard and so that came up, I don't know how but it has meaning to it. Thank you.

This thin volume is the story of Rachel, a high school Outsider alienated from the plastic masses. Her one peer is a new student who shares her gift for the written word.

Rachel volunteers at a local animal shelter -- a thankless job with no paycheque. Her supervisor is alternately shrill and cold, but there is an older animal control officer type who sees Rachel's potential and befriends her.

A problem arises when a vicious feral collie with a badly infected leg is captured and caged. The naive Rachel "identifies" with the straydog and believes that she can tame it. She names it, feeds it treats, sits with it, coos to it, and begins writing poetry about it to submit for a contest. Her equally naive peer thinks they should build a pen for it behind his house where they all can play in the sun happily ever after.

But this dog is vicious, and wild, and uncontrollable. Everything is AFRAID AFRAID and the They have it in a cage and it cannot run so it BITES and They hold it down while the cool cool dark like sleep comes and . . .

oh

Kathe Koja made tyr_shadowblade cry -- and I'm somewhat pissed off about that -- but a book that affects me that profoundly HAS to be extremely good, so I gave it 5 stars.

Straydog is a great book if you need to have a quick read. I enjoyed it the whole way i was reading it. I recomend it to poeple that are animals lovers and maybe work or help out at an animal shelter. The book can inspire someone to maybe save a animals life at the shelter or off the street. This book is a great book and i loved it the whole way. It is sad, inserational, and happy all at the same time!

Rachel is a loner. She doesn't fit in with any of the high school cliques; she'd much rather sit alone and daydream or write - but the only place she feels truly at home is at the animal shelter, volunteering with dogs. She loves them all, but it is the wounded, fearfully aggressive feral collie she calls Grrl that truly captures her heart. With the encouragement of her English teacher, she begins to write the stray dog's story, as told from Grrl's point of view. When she befriends another talented young writer, the two come up with a plan to rescue Grrl from the shelter and rehabilitate her in a safe place.

Kathe Koja's "Straydog" is the kind of book that makes everything else you've ever read feel flat and second-rate. Nearly every page contains some rare gem of wisdom, or some explosion of richly readable poetic prose that makes you want to sink your teeth into the paper just to make it a part of you. I enjoyed the novel from the opening paragraph, and it took all of five pages for me to realize this was a book I was going to want to keep forever and read again and again, when Rachel reflects on her status as a social outsider: "What do you do when you're too smart for the freaks, but too much of a freak for the smart kids? when there's no table in the lunchroom for the ones like you? Do you fight? or run away? or deform yourself, trying to fit in? Or do you write it all down and make stories out of it, make something out of nothing, out of sitting alone at the back of the yard wondering why no one but you can see the things you see, why no one but you gets upset when it's really cold outside, like ten below, and the animals - the birds and squirrels, the stray cats and dogs - are freezing and hungry, why no one but you is like you?"

It was natural that I would relate to Rachel - I too am an introverted writer with a deep love for all animals and especially for dogs. Like me, Rachel doesn't always feel she can talk openly to her mother, and her father is, like mine, insensitive and selfish. However, this book touched me in a way that goes far beyond easy empathy for the character. Somehow, in this tiny little novel, barely 100 pages, Koja managed to reach deep into my soul and wrap my heartstrings around her little finger. I'm easily moved to tears, but I can't remember the last time I had such a visceral response to a novel. Rachel's writing about Grrl is sheer genius: a rich and moving stream of consciousness in the most authentic canine voice you may ever read.

"Straydog" is a novel about trust and love and fear and interconnectedness, about hope and unexpected redemption. It took me less than two hours to read, but it will be with me for a lifetime. In ways I haven't begun to explore in the half hour since I finished the final paragraph (which could have been sentimental treacle in the hands of a lesser author, but which Koja delivers in a rush of pure genuine emotion), this book has become a part of the way I understand and live in the world. It's that good. It is that authentic and raw and rare an experience. There isn't so much as a single thought or word in this novel that doesn't ring true. It's the sort of book that captures your mind so perfectly, brings the story and characters to such vivid life in your mind, that when you get to the end you're a little surprised that you remembered to keep turning the pages, because you don't seem to remember having read a BOOK at all.

If you have a humane and human heart beating in your chest, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

Back in the 90's Kathe Koja wrote several `horror' novels that were pretty dark and disturbing (to me, anyways) and when I read that she was writing Young Adult novels I pretty much said "what the frack!?" and I wanted to try one of them. And when I saw the cover for this one I wanted to check it out even more.

I liked it. It's not what I expected. For some reason I was thinking a YA novel would have more of a bunnies and butterflies vibe or something but this book is a bit more than that.

It's a very short book. Basically about a young girl who feels misunderstood by everybody and volunteers at the local animal shelter where she bonds with a stray dog that is very feral and pretty much beyond hope and her attempts to save the dog from it's fate.

Straydog is a great read and it was a fun and quick read. I loved and also enjoyed it all the way through it. I recomend it to poeple that love animals and also maybe help out at shelters with animals. Myabe this book might also save an animals life in somehow. It might inspire someone. This book was great!