Skip to main content

HOUND DOG TRUE by Linda Urban


copyright date: September 2011
primarily marketed for:  intermediate readers (9 and up)

Donalyn Miller, one of my hero teachers, wrote a review (on the Nerdy Book Club blog) of Hound Dog True by Linda Urban that made me feel I had to read this book.  The thing she said that was particularly convincing was this:

But have you ever read a book and loved it so much that you didn’t want to share it with anyone? As if the moment you told someone, the book would melt like a snowflake in a hot palm or wilt like a picked flower.

This is how I feel about Hound Dog True. Some books you read and some books read you and some books fit right under your ribs, so you can carry them with you.

I think that’s the kind of book everyone needs to read. 

Hound Dog True is the story of 5th grader Mattie Breen.  Mattie and her mom temporarily move in with her uncle so that they will be around to care for him while he has surgery on his knee in a few months.  Mattie is tired of moving.  Tired of being the new girl.  So she cooks up a plan to become her uncle’s apprentice.  He is the custodian at the elementary school.  She figures if she works with him during lunch and recess, she can avoid the most awkward moments of the day. 

So in the last few weeks of summer, she follows her uncle around and keeps track of all sorts of custodial wisdom in her notebook.  She used to use her notebook for writing stories, but then something happened to cause her to stop telling stories. 

Through an unlikely friendship, a traumatic accident, and some wise words from her principal, “You can’t have brave without scared,” Mattie learns to open up and tell her stories again.  She even has some hard talks and grows closer to her mother as a result. 

Hound Dog True is pure Linda Urban story magic.  It is a story for younger readers and older readers who are young at heart and who understand the power of story to impact lives.

Reading Threads:
A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban
Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (inspired by Siobhan Dowd)
Rules by Cynthia Lord
One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
Labels:

Comments

  1. Linda BJuly 3, 2012 at 9:27 AM

    I'm in the middle of this, Christy, & so far, little has happened which makes me very nervous about everyone. Thanks for the review, & I also like the threads you're sharing-good to have a whole group to turn to. I haven't read the first one in the list, but all of the others I know are special.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ms. YinglingJuly 3, 2012 at 1:12 PM

    I did think this one was rather on the young side. It would be a really tough sell for an 8th grader.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TAKE WHAT YOU CAN CARRY by Kevin C. Pyle

copyright date: March 2012 primarily marketed for: young adults (12 and up) Despite the fact that the teacher in me sees so many lesson possibilities in Kevin C. Pyle’s graphic novel Take What You Can Carry , you should read it simply for the grace of its stories.   The artwork is as striking as the stories it tells.   Using artwork in two different colors and styles, Pyle tells the stories of two teenage boys living years and miles apart.   And yet, he communicates the universality in their experiences.   One boy is a Japanese American forced to move into an internment camp during WWII.   His family struggles to maintain their dignity and sense of peace under unbearable conditions. The other is a rebellious boy with an attitude whose reckless behavior causes him to wind up in trouble with the law.   To make amends, he finds himself completing community service hours in the most unlikely place.   I found my...
1 comment
Read more

ALL THESE THINGS I’VE DONE by Gabrielle Zevin

copyright date: September 2011 primarily marketed for: young adults (8 th grade and up) I wish I would’ve known this was the beginning of a series before I started this book.   Then again, I might never have picked it up if I thought I might be committing to multiple books… At any rate, this is not a story I will be sad to return to this fall when the sequel is released.   Anya’s story takes place in New York City, in the future.   Around the time you will be old enough to be grandparents. This is a sort of post-apocalyptic, dystopian kind of book in a mild way.   Basically, the United States has self-destructed, and yet life seems to go surprisingly similar to the way we live nowadays.   Except that water and paper are costly and hard to come by.   Chocolate is prohibited.   Caffeine is an illegal drug.   Which is all to say that the setting alone is intriguing. Add to that setting, the fact that Anya is the oldest daughter of the ...
3 comments
Read more

ONE FOR THE MURPHYS by Lynda Mullaly Hunt

copyright date: May 2012 primarily marketed for: intermediate readers (5 th grade and up) I sort of expected One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt to be one of those overly sappy books with unrealistic, sickeningly sweet characters.  However, although the storyline might make it sound sappy, the characters are realistic and dynamic.  After a traumatic incident that lands both she and her mother in the hospital, Carley Connors is taken away and placed in foster care with the Murphy family.  The only life Carley has known is one of put-downs, food scraps, and shopping for clothes in Salvation Army drop boxes.  Until she meets the Murphys.  The Murphys are too good to be true: Julia, the mom, happily makes home-cooked meals for her three boys and firefighting, sports-loving husband.  In fact, Julia isn’t even rattled by Carley’s rough around the edges attitude.  At first, Carley despises the Murphys and the way they make he...
4 comments
Read more