Summer 2: Notes From a Liar and Her Dog

I bought Notes From a Liar and Her Dog from a Scholastic catalog because I've read several books by the author, Gennifer Choldenko and enjoyed each one. She's probably most famous for the Alcatraz books that reference Al Capone, but she's also written some interesting books that address identity issues and show middle schoolers in a realistic light (which means like kids I knew, was, or know).

On the plus side, I loved Ant, the selfish, miserable, stubbornly unlovable protagonist. Her convoluted thought processes made perfect sense to me -- of course you tell your parents that visitors are banned from the math contests as soon as it looks like they can't go anyway. What else could you do? 

On the minus side, the dog in the title turns out to be a tiny yappy Chihuahua cross, which was a big negative. I prefer dogs large enough to pull my Yukon sled across the glacial sheets, not that I have one or get anyway near the treacherous ice, but you never know, right? So the book languished on my TBR pile until my summer challenge to read a book a day from said pile.

But so much of her problems came back to the annoying dog that she loved so much that she'd trick vets into treating him when he got sick. On that front I completely sympathized with the annoyed mother. In the end I couldn't really get over my distaste for the dog Pistachio, although people without my dog issues probably would enjoy the book more. I'll leave it out for my seventh grader, because he did rave about the Al Capone books.