Ember (Rescue Dogs #1)

by Jane B. Mason, Sarah Hines-Stephens

Overview

Action and adventure with high stakes and a happy ending — and dogs!

After Ember is rescued from a devastating house fire, she longs for a forever home. But every family that adopts the yellow Lab puppy brings her back, saying she is untrainable, has too much energy, or is just plain destructive. After three failed placements, young Ember is out of options.

The Sterling family runs a ranch that turns rescued dogs into rescue dogs. They're willing to take a chance on the young Lab, not knowing that Ember's first rescue will test her skills and strength beyond imagination...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781338362022
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	01/07/2020
Series:	Rescue Dogs , #1
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	1,032,113
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	820L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Sarah Hines Stephens lives in Oakland, California, where she spends her time keeping up with her children and writing books with Jane B. Mason, including A Dog and His Girl Mysteries and the Candy Apple titles The Sister Switch and Snowfall Surprise.
Jane B. Mason lives in Oakland, California, where she spends her time adjusting to her teenage children, open water swimming, and writing. Her most recent titles, written with Sarah Hines Stephens, include A Dog and His Girl Mysteries and the Candy Apple titles The Sister Switch and Snowfall Surprise. Without Annette was Jane's YA debut.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Maiden Voyage:

* "Jane shines at atmospheric descriptions of the opulence of the ship and the people themselves while also managing to bring her powers of keen observation to the third-class passengers, many of whom were immigrant families full of hope . . . A compelling novel that stands both on its own merit and as an addition to the wealth of Titanic literature." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Jane pulls off the unusual feat of being both suspenseful and informative, gracefully incorporating technical details about the boat into high-drama scenes." — New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

01/31/2020

Gr 3–5—Mason quickly pulls in young animal lovers with an opening scene in which a puppy is rescued from a fire. The story then follows the puppy, Ember, through several homes where her owners do not appreciate her fervor for digging or her general exuberance. Finally, Ember gets a chance to become a rescue dog. The heart of the book focuses on the family that runs the rigorous training program for dogs and handlers. The characters are somewhat cookie-cutter, and the plot may be predictable for older readers. Young animal enthusiasts will likely find this title satisfying if not especially memorable. VERDICT Not a first purchase, but recommended for libraries where heartwarming animal or disaster fiction series are popular with late elementary readers.—Gesse Stark-Smith, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR

School Library Journal

2019-09-15
A shelter dog is given a chance to become a search-and-rescue dog.

Ember, a yellow Lab mix, is a tiny puppy when she is rescued from a house fire by dark-skinned firefighter Marcus and brought to a shelter. But after the third adoptive family returns her, Jo, the shelter director, on a hunch, calls a ranch that trains SAR dogs, and they agree to give Ember a try. Authors Mason and Stephens go into copious but interesting detail about the procedure of training SAR dogs, but the many human characters the plot introduces are dizzying: The ranch is peopled by interracial parents Georgia (a trilingual Eritrean German immigrant) and Martin (a white American), their four biracial children, Latinx handler/trainer Pedro, and white dog-trainer Roxanne. The children, especially, have their own tangential subplots, which has the effect of diffusing, rather than focusing, the plot. This wandering focus is not helped by the narrative point of view, which switches from character to character, often within scenes. The story finds its footing again when Marcus (who by coincidence is at the ranch training to be a SAR handler) and Ember reconnect to become a team. Kudos to the story's easy character diversity and equity in gender roles, but the pace can be meandering, and eagerly anticipated action doesn't appear until the last 50 pages.

Competent, if somewhat rambling. (Fiction. 9-14)

Kirkus Reviews