Millie (Best Friends Dog Tales), by McCall Hoyle and Kevin Keele, Shadow Mountain, March 5, 2024, Hardcover, $18.99 (ages 8-12)
A street dog and a young girl with abandonment issues help each other heal in Millie, Book 3 in McCall Hoyle’s Best Friends Dog Tales series.
Millie is a feisty border terrier who lives on the streets and has a keen sense for finding scraps of food, usually in the shadows or the cover of darkness. She protects herself with a shield of what is perceived by many as aggression–barking and snarling–when in reality, Millie is just plain scared.
Turned over to animal control after a recent run-in with the dogcatcher, Millie is rescued by a special education teacher who also rehabilitates and rehomes dogs. It’s a win-win. Together, the dogs and her students learn emotional resilience, anger management, and other coping skills.
When one of the students, a struggling reader named Tori, shows a natural gift for dog training and working with fearful dogs, Millie is temporarily placed in her care. Tori may be young, but she knows a thing or two about anger, fear, and abandonment after her mother could no longer care for her and she was placed in kinship care with her grandfather. Millie wonders if she’s finally found her person and begins to let down her emotional guard. But when trust and belonging are challenged, Millie reverts to old habits–fleeing, hiding, and growling. Will she end up back on the streets? Or can Millie and Tori embrace their training, trust in each other, and find a forever home together? —Synopsis provided by Shadow Mountain
“Is that another dog book by McCall Hoyle?” That’s the first thing my 10-year-old said when she saw the cover of Millie, and as I write this, said kid is in the other room voraciously reading it.
“I like that they’re from the dog’s point of view and not the person’s.” my daughter said of Hoyle’s books. “And how they’re (the dog) not used to something and then they get used to it. They have big and little adventures.”
My daughter’s not wrong. Hoyle is great at capturing a dog’s spirit without over personifying it. She maintains a dog’s nature but amps it up a little for the audience. It’s a great hook and it really helps push the story forward.
In Millie, Hoyle explores how trust can be both broken and built, and by doing it from a dog’s point of view, it becomes simplified and quickly relatable to the reader.
Hoyle’s writing is warm and accessible. And her pacing is spot on. At just over 200 pages, it’s more accessible to less confident readers. It would also be an excellent classroom read aloud.
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