cocoonofbooks 's review for:

Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

4.0

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I never read this one as a kid, but I probably would have liked it. I liked books where kids had to solve a problem on their own through ingenuity and hard work. In this case, the main character is trying to hide and care for a dog that a local man has been mistreating. He's unusually concerned about all animals for a boy growing up in rural West Virginia, where hunting is expected of him. The book is clearly best suited for classroom discussion, as it poses a number of complex moral questions that aren't really answered in the text, like whether it's OK to lie (or worse) in service of a good cause; if you should feel guilty about seeing other animals mistreated or killed and only working to save one of them; if it's appropriate to feel sorry for someone who's cruel to animals who had a hard childhood. I felt like some of these were skirted around pretty quickly (especially everything that happens in the last chapter) and I would have liked the author to dig more into these morally complex issues if she was going to bring them up, but hopefully in a classroom setting they spark valuable conversation and debate. Nowadays this wouldn't be the first book I'd recommend for a classroom (there are more than enough books about white boys and their dogs) but I'm glad to have finally read this.