“Friendship is mysterious… Then along comes a tiny rodent and a robot dog… And we’re littermates for life.”
Chance is a three-legged dog who lives in Dogtown – a wonderful, lively shelter full of intelligent humans, dogs with personality and histories, and a family of mice hiding in the eaves. As a three-legged dog, no one thinks Chance will be adopted. It makes for stiff competition as all the dogs in Dogtown would like to be adopted and taken home. They each have their own “Adopt Me!” routine when a prospective child or family peers into their cages. They all hope, but as they note: “Hope is a painful business.”
Believe it or not, Dogtown has robot dogs who long for new families to adopt them, too. Who would want a robot dog? Plenty of people. They don’t poop and some even come with velcro fleas! But the authentic dogs resent the robot dogs; every time a family adopts a robot dog, it means a real dog is getting left behind.
Naturally, Chance and her friends resent the new robot dog they call Metal Head, who is constantly studying his own manual. But as Chance plots and schemes to help save a couple of dogs – Buster, from getting in trouble; Geraldine from her fate at the top of The List – Metal Head emerges as a resourceful ally, making way for a friendship to bloom.
Authors Katherine Applegate and Gennifer Choldenko present Dogtown in a series of economic, witty chapters filled with equal parts humor and sentiment. The story is filled with choice details. During Reading Buddies: “We sat in their laps, nuzzled their knees, and listened while books with bright beautiful pictures were read to us.” Chance excels at describing humans by their smell. There’s Quinn, the little boy who turns out to love Green Eggs and Ham, smells “like buttered toast with a touch of toothpaste.” There’s also the untrustworthy dog sitter who smells “like chlorine and cherry cough syrup.”
After helping Buster and Geraldine, Chance and Metal Head set out with their diminutive and trusty friend, Mouse to find Metal Head’s original home. This is an exciting odyssey, that doesn’t end the way you think it might. It does, however, lead Chance to discover the family she thinks abandoned her – Jessie (“blueberry pancakes”) and Professor Besser (“manila folders”) – really just hasn’t returned from their sabbatical.
The mysterious, powerful bond formed by Chance and Metal Head (and Mouse, the subject of Dogtown’s sequel) teaches Chance the valuable lesson that, “Your heart is a powerful muscle. It grows stronger the more you use it.”
