Still Her Spirit Sings

K-Gr 2—In the first half of this saccharine story, readers meet a lovable but mischievous dog as she is adopted, grows up, and dies. The story is told in four-line stanzas of blank verse, spending several pages on Spirit's small quirks, such as chewing household items and stealing food from the table. Her death is dealt with on a single page, which includes the memorable line, "After she died we cried and cried." The second half of the book consists of philosophical questions about whether dogs have souls and lists idealized canine attributes that humans should emulate ("She didn't know how to hold a grudge/unlike some people that we know/People have so many flaws/The same cannot be said of dogs."). The flat, amateurish illustrations do not make up for the clunky verse. For books on dealing with the loss of a pet, choose instead Judith Viorst's The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (S & S/Atheneum, 1971), Cynthia Rylant's Dog Heaven (Scholastic/Blue Sky, 1995), or Corrine Demas's Saying Goodbye to Lulu (Little, Brown, 2004).—Misti Tidman, Boyd County Public Library, Ashland, KY