Slice of Life: Three Doggone Good Books!

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the Tuesday Slice of Life (SOL) community.

Thanks to Stacey, Betsy, Dana, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Lisa, and Melanie

                    for hosting this meeting place each Tuesday and nurturing our writing lives.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear!  I'm a cat lover and it's rare for cat lovers to fall for "dog tales (tails)."  Heck, cat lovers usually don't even pick up doggie books.  But my previous experience with Kirby Larsen's Dash found me itching to read her new "Dogs of World War II" book, Liberty.  I expressed my desire to read it on a Twitter feed and a few days later, an autographed ARC arrived in my mailbox from Kirby Larson!  I started it on my trip to DC and finished it while I was there.  Its next stop is my niece's 4th grade classroom in Oklahoma.  

I can't talk about Liberty without introducing Wish by Barbara O'Connor, another book I read this month.  As I read Liberty, I couldn't stop making connections to Wish.  Both books have boy-girl friendships at the heart of the stories.  In Wish, the friendship is between main character, Charlie (a girl) and Howard.  In Liberty it's between main character, Fish, and Olympia, his next door neighbor.  The boy in each story has a physical struggle that affects his walk.  Howard's irregular gait is described by Charlie as an up-down walk while Fish's step-clomp walk is due to a bout with polio.  Both main characters have an older sister.  Both books are set in the south:  Liberty in New Orleans during World War II and Wish in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina.  In both books, the main character tames a stray dog.  And yes, even if you're a cat lover, you'll found yourself falling in love with Liberty and Wishbone!

My third doggone good book is The Poet's Dog by Patricia MacLachlan.  Patricia MacLachlan is one of those authors that I've loved for a long time (ever since Sarah Plain and Tall).  Her novels never fail to fill me with delight.   And The Poet's Dog does not disappoint.  It's a slim volume that can easily be read in one sitting.  The narrator is a dog named Teddy.  I'll borrow these words from the front book flap to entice you to read this book:  "... a poignant story about two children, a poet, and a dog and how they help each other survive loss and recapture love."  You'll sigh with delight as you turn the last page and look around you in search of a next reader for this lovely gem of a book.  

I give you three books by well-known authors, three dogs to love, three doggone good books!