alys 's review for:

Saving Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

4.0

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I liked this book more than I thought I would going into it. Like many people, I sometimes have a hard time with mushy books about dogs. This book, though most of the external action revolved around the dog, was really less about an animal and more about ethical decisions, and about the hard truths behind growing up and realizing that not everything in the world is black and white. A lot of award winning books seem to boil down to "and then he realized that the world is a complicated place and sometimes there are no right answers", but I think that that is because it is such a hard realization, one that we must make again and again and again, because we so desperately want there to be a clear path in life, rather than the murky way before us. This book did a remarkable job in showing a boy with a moral dilemma that was age appropriate for a young audience. And it didn't hurt that for once the dog survives. :-}