THE BOY WHO RETURNED FROM THE SEA

In this sequel to The Boy Who Spoke Dog (2003), Jack makes his way back to the uninhabited island on which he had been stranded a year earlier. There he’s reunited with Moxie, the Border collie whom he had befriended and helped. As if the feral “fangos,” killer dogs who attack and kill the sheep that Moxie and the other “true dogs” herd and defend, aren’t enough, Jack finds himself up against another adversary. The dangerous pirate Blackburn Jukes has come ashore, too, and terrorizes Jack into finding the island’s cache of amber. The action is swift, as told in terse, choppy sentences, and readers who enjoyed the first novel will probably appreciate this one. They’ll be touched that Jack and his beloved canine friend, who communicate in a mystical manner, which animal lovers will recognize and understand, meet and join forces again. Undiscriminating readers likely won’t mind that the writing is amateurish, much of the dialogue is unrealistic and the ending isn’t conclusive, suggesting yet another sequel. (Fiction. 9-12)