The Dog in the Freezer: A Novel of Pearl Harbor

by Harry Mazer

Overview

In these three finely crafted novellas that chart the emotional ties that bind man and man’s best friend together, a brilliant dog changes places with his basketball playing master, a young man falls in love with a dog trainer, and a newspaper delivery boy tries desperately to find an appropriate final resting place for one of his customer’s beloved pets.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780689807541
Publisher:	Aladdin
Publication date:	09/01/1998
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Harry Mazer is the author of many books for young readers, including Please, Somebody Tell Me Who I Am; My Brother Abe; the Boy at War trilogy; The Wild Kid; The Dog in the Freezer; The Island Keeper; and Snow Bound. His books have won numerous honors, including a Horn Book honor and an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults citation. Along with his wife, Norma Fox Mazer, Harry received an ALAN award in 2003 for outstanding contribution to adolescent literature. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

This herky-jerky collection of three dog-related stories never fully gels; none of the pieces is quite strong enough to stand on its own, and the combination of the entries doesn't add much enhancement. The best is "Puppy Love," which deals with a teenage boy who visits his uncle for the summer, develops a crush on a dog trainer and then gets a dog as a way of getting to know the trainer. Characterizations are generally convincing, even if some of the figures seem more like types. The weakest is the title story, about a lonely boy who can't stand to see his neighbor's dead dog headed for the incinerator, so he steals it, puts it in the freezer, then searches all over New York City for a place to bury the body; he's a troubled kid who doesn't want his parents to get divorced. The mood here wavers between black comedy and just plain weird. The third story, wildly different in tone, involves a boy and his dog who wake up to find they've exchanged places-the boy's a dog and the dog's a boy-just in time for the big high school basketball game. The writing feels a little rushed, and the plot is none too fresh. A poem dedicated to the memory of a pet dog, "Giles' Song" by Gina Mazer, is tacked on at the end of the book. Ages 8-12. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 6-9Three novellas that center around boys and dogs and the obstacles they must overcome. In "My Life as a Boy," Einstein the dog and Gregory, his owner, change bodies. Einstein wins Gregory's basketball game before overcoming the local bullies who are intent on killing the dog. A fatherless boy is sent to spend the summer with an uncle he has never met in "Puppy Love." Lonely and bored, Lucas gets a dog (which he can't take home due to building regulations). No one thinks ahead to the end of summer, and even after the puppy puts down an aggressive bully, her future looks bleak until the uncle makes a last-minute reversal and decides to keep her. The title story is by far the strangest. Jake is frightened by a small, aggressive dog that lives in his building, but when the animal dies, he can't stand the idea of its body being disposed of in the garbage. Missing his absent father and upset that his parents are separating, the boy takes the canine corpse to his apartment where it resides briefly in the freezer while he journeys around New York City trying to find a spot to bury it. These are certainly unusual stories. The writing is straightforward, relying on simple sentence structures and an easy vocabulary, but the language never engages readers fully. The characterizations are superficial and the shallow plots are driven by events that do not ring true.Darcy Schild, Schwegler Elementary School, Lawrence, KS

School Library Journal

Three offbeat stories about dogs, boys, and fathers, from Mazer (Who Is Eddie Leonard?, 1993, etc.). In "My Life as a Boy," a devoted dog narrates the adventure of switching bodies with his young master for a day, an experience which gives the boy the courage to confront both the local bullies and his doting father. In "Puppy Love," a fatherless boy spends part of the summer with his quirky, effusive uncle, falls in love for the first time, and, at summer's end, is surprised to find that the dog his uncle casually allowed him to adopt is the link that forges their continuing relationship. In the title story, Jake is unable to bear the thought of a neighbor's dead dog being left for the sanitation department to pick up; he impulsively snatches the body and is confronted with the problem of how to bury it—in New York City. The funerary journey on which he embarks is bizarre, ending in Coney Island. This isn't Mazer's best work: Missing in the short form is his hallmark—the slow, painful progress of maturity in his characters. Still, this is an interesting departure for him, and may bring new readers to his survival stories and YA problem novels.

Kirkus Reviews