Be strong
Be fierce
Life is more
Than a concrete floor

The Way of Dog
Is a brilliant and beautiful book
Written in verse
From a dog’s point of snout

I wanted to read it out loud
Just for me
To feel the rhythm of the words
The power of the poetry

I love verse novels
And this one had me from the first
An absolute joy to read
Though an uncomfortable subject matter

As we follow Scruffity
Taken from his mother to
The harsh grey world
Of a puppy farm
His brothers and sisters
Are all adopted
Find families
Scruffity is alone and lonely
Until he is befriended
And set free
By a boy as unwanted as he is

We follow Scruffity
As he learns to run
To dig
To howl
And biggest of all
To love
But then tragedy strikes

This is perhaps more than anything
A love story
A tale of friendship

But through
The Way of Dog
There are many
Moments of magic
That shine a light
On other important themes

The importance of slowing down
Of making the ordinary
Extraordinary
Taking time to notice
The wild world around us

The importance of sharing our feelings
Releasing emotions
Not keeping things hidden inside
Not allowing feelings to fester
Learning to howl
Proper Dog!

The importance of kindness
Scruffity looks after an Old One
With a StringThing
Who we learn is a refugee
Lost and unwell
Scruffity saves her life
And his kindness leads
To her finding her family

The importance of connection
Finding friends in
Unexpected places
In unexpected people
The importance in standing up
For others
Standing up against things
We know to be wrong

This is a story of courage
Of resilience
Of loyalty
Of hope

Among the many moving moments
There are also sprinkles of humour
I adore the SkyRiverSwimmers
And their Quackpups

I love the way Zana Fraillon
Plays with words
And creates a dog vocabulary

Shoe-legs
MyManPup
MammaDogs
ScratchCat
Wide-eye
Sound-snatch
Schnuffle
SkySingers

I love the use of repetition

Words and phrases
Bounce and dance on the page
They keep the story flowing
They hook you in and
Make you feel what Scuffity is feeling

I am not a dog owner
But I can imagine how incredibly powerful
This story must be
For readers with a special canine friend

I am definitely going to buy this book
For my sister
Who has a gorgeous dog
Wilf
Who looks just like Scruffity

As a family we often talk
About adding a dog to our number
If ever we do
I feel like I might be a better owner now
Now that Zana Fraillon
Has so brilliantly and beautifully shown me
The Way of Dog

To hear more about this wonderful book
Do follow the rest of the blog tour
With Chicken House Books