From Amazon.com
"What do you do when you're too smart for the freaks, but too much of a freak for the smart kids?" This is the question Rachel asks herself daily as she walks down the halls of her high school observing the strange rituals of the "TV Girls," "People from Planet Mensa," and the "Net Jockeys." Rachel couldn't care less that she doesn't fit in. As far as she's concerned, the only things she needs to survive are her volunteer work at the local animal shelter and her writing. Until she meets the feral collie she christens Grrl. To others at the shelter, Grrl seems completely untamable. But Rachel sees her own fury and frustration mirrored in the dog's deep brown eyes, and she is determined to domesticate Grrl. Inspired by the outlaw dog, Rachel's writing takes off, and she is even coaxed into sharing it with "Griffin Lost Boy," another creative loner like herself. But giving her story a happy ending and providing one for Grrl in real life are two totally different things, and no matter how strong Rachel thinks she is, she may not be strong enough to handle the truth about Grrl.
Weighing in at just over one hundred pages, this slim tome nevertheless packs a powerful emotional wallop. While angry, abused Grrl may seem like an obvious metaphor for the angry adolescent experience, author Kathe Koja's short, choppy sentences where both girl and Grrl snarl and snap at the world are well executed and inventive. Take this Straydog home from the pound immediately. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.
From Publishers Weekly
Koja (Extremities), the author of novels for adults, enters the YA realm with a solid if sometimes familiar tale of a high school misfit: "What do you do when you're too smart for the freaks, but too much of a freak for the smart kids? when there's no table in the lunchroom for the ones like you?" For Rachel, the answer is to wear her anger on her sleeve anger at her parents, at her shallow classmates, and at a world whose expectations seem so superficial and to isolate herself. She takes solace in her writing and in her volunteer job at an animal shelter, where she feels an instant kinship with a feral collie ("Why should I trade who I am for who they want me to be? So they can pat me on the head and put me in the normal-girl box? I'd rather be alone. I'd rather be a wild dog than jammed in someone's cage"). She hatches ill-advised plans to save the dog, whom she makes into the narrator of her essay-in-progress, "straydog" (passages are strategically interspersed). A number of elements are well-worn: the encouraging English teacher; the new boy who is a loner yet seems remarkably adept socially; the writing contest that validates Rachel's talent. Yet the protagonist, for all her alienation, proves both compelling and sympathetic. In telling her story, Koja plumbs not only Rachel's dark and darkly funny psyche, but also what it means to be human and to make connections of love and trust. Ages 12-up.
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.
