From School Library Journal
Grade 3-6-In the beginning, Jeff is just an imaginary dog, 10-year-old Suzanne's loyal companion, the dog she has wanted all her life but can't have because of her brother's allergies. Then one day, a black-and-tan dog, the real Jeff, appears, wandering on the median strip of the highway near her home. Suzanne recognizes him immediately and despairs when her father refuses to stop the car and rescue him. Yet miracles do happen, and the animal survives, only to appear later on the family's doorstep. With a great deal of persuasion, Suzanne convinces her parents that this is the perfect dog, her dog, and she is allowed to keep him on a trial basis. What follows is a perfectly riotous summer with Jeff getting into laugh-aloud trouble at every turn. But summers, even the best of them, end, and this perfect relationship must come to a bittersweet ending as well. In this "mostly true" story, Staples has perfectly captured the feel of a Pennsylvania lakeside summer in the late 1950s. Her writing is rich and descriptive, yet clear and simple. Her characters are all familiar-the lonely, imaginative child, not quite ready to grow up and longing for a perfect friend; the whiny but helpful younger sister; the exasperated and yet sympathetic mother; the lovable and incorrigible dog-but Staples turns each one into a perfectly rounded individual, a person (or dog) readers could easily know. Like Henry and Mudge, the Blossoms and Mud, Opal and Winn-Dixie, Suzanne and Jeff are sure to become favorites with readers of all ages.
Barbara Scotto, Michael Driscoll School, Brookline, MACopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
Gr. 4-6. In this fictionalized memoir, Staples remembers a blissful summer before fifth grade, when the dog of her dreams miraculously appears at her family's door. "I need a dog because I don't have any real friends," says young Suzanne, a loner who prefers solitary adventures in the woods to the company of other kids. When Jeff, a scruffy mutt the family spotted at the roadside, arrives at the Fishers' door, it seems to be fate. For the rest of the summer, Suzanne roams happily with Jeff, growing closer to her sister and neighborhood kids along the way. Unfortunately, Jeff's comic accidents and escapes prove too difficult to manage, and Suzanne's parents send Jeff to a local farm. The first-person narrative is filled with rich, poetic vocabulary and nostalgic details that belong more to an adult's memories than to a child's viewpoint. But Staples' beautiful words and images capture summer's delicious freedom, and readers will connect with daydreaming, independent Suzanne, who notices everything, fears growing up, and loves her pet with a pure intensity that her parents will never understand.
Gillian EngbergCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
