Notes From The Dog by Gary Paulsen

Publisher- Wendy Lamb Books
Publication Date- July 28, 2009
Pages- 144

“Sometimes having company is not all it’s cracked up to be.” Fifteen-year-old Finn is a loner, living with his dad and his amazing dog, Dylan. This summer he’s hoping for a job where he doesn’t have to talk to anyone except his pal Matthew. Then Johanna moves in next door. She’s 10 years older, cool, funny, and she treats Finn as an equal. Dylan loves her, too. Johanna’s dealing with breast cancer, and Matthew and Finn learn to care for her, emotionally and physically. When she hires Finn to create a garden, his gardening ideas backfire comically. But Johanna and the garden help Finn discover his talents for connecting with people.

I hadn't ever heard about this book prior to reading it. I was falling behind on my 50 book reading challenge and I decided to Google "Quick YA book to read" or something along those lines. This popped up, the cover and title drew my attention, so I got it from my library's eBook program; I didn't even read the description.

This book was very cliché at some points, but that was to be expected, it was more of a middle grade book. Despite that, it dealt with some issues in real ways. As it says in the description, Johanna is dealing with breast cancer. I have known many people with cancer, and I felt that they portrayed it in a very realistic way. This was a very character driven book, not plot. With that, I would say that the characters were pretty real and accurate for the age they were trying to represent.

I had a few minor problems with this:
As implied in the title, it seems like the dog is writing notes to the main character. And he just accepts it. He was kind of like, "Oh, it couldn't have been any of my friends. It must have been the dog." Like there was no other explanation. He jumped to conclusions while every other reasonable human being would use the dog explanation as a last resort.

Also, Finn is supposed to be this very antisocial kid. He was (sort of) trying to get over that. And he got over it almost immediately. I think it would take a normal people-hating person a while to become socially comfortable. But within weeks of us "meeting" him, he goes to parties and on dates and he's perfectly fine, which I don't think was realistic.

Overall, I really enjoyed it, and those issues I pointed out were very minor, I felt.

My Rating:

I will have a review of The Giver by Lois Lowry up either tonight or tomorrow.