Cannine Heroes:
GRK & The Pelotti Gang, Joshua Doder
Andersen Press £4.99 8+
Christopher Russell, Plague Sorceror
Puffin £4.99 9+
Much as I love my children, I might not have bothered to have them had I discovered Cavalier King Charles Spaniels first. Sweeter, cheaper and above all much more appreciative, the canine species now rules my heart to the extent that even seeing the trailer for the new Disney film, Eight Below, about an octet of abandoned huskies surviving the Antarctic, had me blubbing helplessly.
The British are well-known to be soppy about dogs, yet it’s a strange fact that our literature features very few good children’s books about Man’s Best Friend. There is the ghastly Spot, and Dodie Smith’s classic, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, but little in between. So a couple of serious new novels about dogs deserve a cheer.
Joshua Doder’s A Dog Called Grk featured a small, smart dog who, aided by a lonely rich kid, saves the two kidnapped Raffifi children after the evil Colonel Zinfandel has brutally executed their parents. Although Tim, who finds he can fly a helicopter after playing on-line computer games, was a delight, it was really Grk who really won our hearts to the extent that my son re-read the book three times. Grk and the Pelotti Gang is the sequel, and this time Tim, Grk and the Raffifi children are in Brazil. Max and Natascha go to Rio to help catch the Pelotti gang their brave diplomat father opposed, following a £32 million robbery from the Bank of Brazil. Needless to say timid Tim and little Grk who promptly get lost in the slums, thanks to Grk’s canine curiosity about “interesting smells”, and Tim’s dreamy naivety.
Doder combines a lightness of spirit with a sense of the dark things adults to do each other, both at home and abroad. Just as the first Grk book was enriched by a heartfelt indignation at the evils of Eastern European dictatorships so this is deepened by telling children a little of the horror of the Brazilian favelas. Like Anthony Horowiz’s recent novel, Evil Star, a privileged English boy is the better for experiencing a bit of what life is like for the real underclass – not that his dog agrees. When Tim has to fight off the most deadly Pelotti brother in a raging river, it’s Grk who tips the balance by sinking his teeth into the bad guy, then grimly holds onto Tim as he’s about to drown. Not since Tintin and Snowy has there been such a touching boy-dog partnership. More, please!
Postmen aren’t supposed to like dogs, but Christopher Russell, an ex-postie, wrote a strikingly good novel about a brain-damaged “dog-boy” in medieval England who can only communicate with his master’s giant mastiffs (presumably descended from the one in The Sword in the Stone). Like Henrietta Boase’s magnificent Fire, Bed and Bone, Brind and the Dogs of War combined medieval history with thrilling doggy derring-do. Now back from the Battle of Crecy, the Black Death has struck in Plague Sorceror . It’s a bad time to be a bit different, and soon Brind, the mastiffs Glaive and Gabion, and the French girl Aurelie are fighting for their lives against accusations of sorcery.
The corruption caused by superstition and greed are well-dramatised – though much of what pure-hearted Brind and the dogs instinctively choose is also very funny. The climax, when the two children are saved by “the finest pack of mastiffs in all of England” rallying to their outnumbered, embattled friends in “a deadly phalanx of muscle and teeth” makes you want to cheer. The heroic heart of dogs, large or small, is unfailing, and so is the pleasure of such tales.
Also try:
Francesca Simon, Little Yellow Dog. 2+ Charming series
about a scamp.
Jeanne Willis/Tony Ross Dr Xargle’s Books of
Earth Hounds. 4+ Alien misinformation about earthlings,
and dogs.
Henrietta Boase, Fire, Bed & Bone 9+. The Peasant’s
Revolt through the eyes of a dog. A neglected masterpiece.
Jack London, White Fang. 10+. The real thing.
The Times, April 2006