From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3. Pavel discovers a dog half frozen in the snow and saves its life. When he shows it to his father, he learns that it is a wolfhound, a breed kept only by nobles, dukes, and the Tsar himself. The boy's father fears that they will be accused of stealing the animal and plans to drive it away at night to live or die. Hoping the wolfhound will find its way home, Pavel leads it into the Tsar's forest. A pack of wolves approaches, and as the dog chases them off, the Tsar arrives. He thanks Pavel for saving Tatiana and sends him home to tell the tale. But no one believes a word of it until the spring, when a royal messenger delivers a gift from Tatiana?a puppy. The text is clear, if not compelling. The full- and double-page illustrations, done in watercolor and oil paints and surrounded by scrolling tapestry borders, are rendered in a manner evocative of Tsarist Russia. Unfortunately, the artist's depiction of the characters' anatomy is awkward. The bright white background on which the text is presented often distracts from the illustrations' more muted tones. This is a story for dog lovers to read along with Joanna Cole's My Puppy Is Born (Morrow, 1991), Tres Seymour's Pole Dog (Orchard, 1993), and Debra Keller's The Trouble with Mister (Chronicle, 1995).?Susan M. Moore, Louisville Free Public Library, KY
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Booklist
Ages 5^-8. Pavel, a young boy living in czarist Russia, rescues a half-frozen dog and asks his father if he can keep it. But the dog is a wolfhound ("Only nobles keep wolfhounds . . . they will say you stole it"), and a peasant caught with a royal pet risks imprisonment or death. Even so, the boy doesn't want the dog to die, and he and the dog willingly face social taboos and dangerous wolves in the wild in order to save each other. Franklin's vivid text imagery and Waldherr's elegant, decorative illustrations (every page is set within a tapestrylike border) result in a memorable tale that provides entry into a period of Russian history when rules were harsh, clothing distinctive, and survival capricious. Karen Morgan
