Truck Dogs - Hardcover

Base, Graeme

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810950316 ISBN 13: 9780810950313

Publisher: Amulet Books, 2004

Synopsis

Is it an animal with an engine? Or is it a machine with floppy ears and a wet nose?

"With the eye of a Renaissance painter and the early Dr. Seuss, Graeme Base is not your basic children's book author." -People magazine

Graeme Base-whose picture books have sold millions of copies worldwide-has turned his creative talents to writing fiction. He and Molly, his Labrador friend and collaborator on this project, have written a dog story of epic proportions.

In a far-off desert world, evolution has taken an unexpected turn. The dominant life form is a creature covered in fur with steel panels beneath. It gnaws on bones and sniffs lampposts but fills up on oil, brake fluid, and petrol to keep running. And it's wonderfully clever with its wheels and side-view mirrors-able to do just about anything, in fact-which is lucky since it doesn't have arms or legs. It's an animal with an engine. Or is it a machine with floppy ears and a wet nose? Either way, it's known as a TruckDog. And this is the story of how the world of TruckDogs was saved by a most young and unlikely hero.

About this title

About the Author

Graeme Base lives in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife, Robyn, and their three children. Molly, his Labrador friend, lives with them, too. They spend a lot of time roaming through the Australian outback, a terrain remarkably similar to the setting of this book. He is the author of the bestsellers Animalia and The Water Hole.

Reviews

Grade 5-8--Base moves into novels, leaving behind the richly illustrated and rhyming texts for which he is known, such as Animalia (1987) and Sign of the Seahorse (1992, both Abrams). Here, readers are treated every few pages to his imaginative and detailed color drawings of Australian outback creatures that are blends of animals and motorized vehicles, such as TruckSheep, TruckRoos, TruckBugs, and more. TruckDogs are the main characters in this story of a town that must overcome its generation gap to survive. The two generations are brought together by Rex, a wise drifter/mechanic who is a mixture of red setter and tractor. He helps the disapproving elders see that they cannot save their town from the lawless RottWheeler gang alone. And he helps the town's "Mongrel Pack" of youth (ages 11 to 14) to see that they can harness their energy and individual talents in positive ways. It's a great message, delivered in a captivating manner, with just two bumps in the road. First, reluctant or younger readers who are pulled in by the drawings, the dogs, and the cars might get bogged down in 50-page chapters, needing smaller, more manageable bites. The second hurdle is the Australian vocabulary, not all of which can be deduced from context, and some such words are important to understanding the story. Readers who can hang on during the bumps should enjoy the ride.--Laurie von Mehren, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Parma, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gr. 4-6. Base's latest novel, "told to him by his dog Molly," is possibly his quirkiest yet. The plot, a heroic fantasy of sorts, will be comfortably familiar: a stranger brings stodgy adult townsfolk and bored, energetic, "delinquent" youth together to battle marauding evildoers who would destroy the town. Of course, it's the characters that provide the punch, and they are unforgettable. With names like Sparky Plugg and Rex, they are a surprising, complicated amalgam of human, vehicle, and dog, eagerly snorting, backfiring, and digging their way through the action, and providing glorious opportunity for wordplay, slapstick comedy, and excitement. That is, of course, if readers can keep them straight--a distinct problem at the outset, when details of their peculiarities nearly sink the story. Did Molly bite off more than she could chew? Some kids will certainly think so, but Base's clever picture-portraits help in the sorting, and patient readers whose own imaginations tend to work overtime are bound to come away grinning; the good guys win, and there are plenty of dog biscuits and full tanks to go around. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Amulet Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810950316
• ISBN 13: 9780810950313
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 158