Muddy Four Paws (We Love Animals S., #1)

by Jean Ure

This brand new series introduces Clara Carter and her best friend Jilly. They're two bright and perky eleven-year-old girls who let the whole world know where their loyalties lay: "We love animals!" These humorous, always fascinating short novels are told from Clara's point of view, and are divided into chapters so that kids can enjoy reading them in more than one session.

When Clara and Jilly first see the suitcase in a ditch, they don't expect it to yelp. The noise-maker turns out to be Mud, an abandoned dog -- and they really want to keep him!

• ISBN10: 0764109685
• ISBN13: 9780764109683
• Publish Date: 1 April 1999 (first published 20 February 1998)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Peterson's Guides,U.S.
• Imprint: Barron's Educational Series Inc.,U.S.
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 160
• Language: English

Reviews

Reminiscent of Animal Ark, We Love Animals follows two tween girls, Clara and Jilly as they go about trying to make a difference for the animals they encounter. In the first installment, they find a man dumping a suitcase and are horrified to find it contains a dog! Clara wants to keep the dog, but her mum refuses to adopt a dog so big and instead takes the dog, they decide to call Mud (because no matter how often they bath him he always manages to find some mud to roll in), to the animal shelter. When the girls visit Mud they are inspired to continue to volunteer at the shelter - cleaning, grooming, playing, etc - whatever the shelter needs.

The two girls are kind of whiny throughout the book - but they are eleven - so it's kind of to be expected. I don't remember that particularly bothering me when I was an eleven year old reading this. Regardless of the whine, the dialogue is fast paced and suprisingly snarky. The dynamic between Clara and her mum was interesting - Clara does manipulate her but she also recognises that she's kind of difficult to live with and her mum is pretty understanding except when she loses it for her kid being difficult and even then she feels horribly guilty for saying mean things. For instance;

I told Mum that life was the pits and that I wished I'd never been born, and she said that she sometimes wished I'd never been born as well. And then she cried and said she didn't mean it, which actually I knew without her telling me, because my mum is ace and puts up with a lot.

Ure, Jean. Muddy Four Paws (p. 3). Hippo. Paperback Edition.

The dynamic would have to be more honest than usually seen in tween fiction. I can't think of the last time I read one that put that in print. It was amusing for me but probably traumatising for tweens. Although I can't remember it particularly bothering me when I first read it. So maybe not.

I liked the emphasis on volunteering and helping out - especially when they make an effort to be nice to Lucy and Caesar - two dogs that have been abused but don't have as nice a nature as Mud. I liked that it was also emphasised that you shouldn't just approach and pat dogs when you don't know their temperament - because it's not the dog's fault when they bite you but they are the ones that get blamed.

The friendship between Clara and Jilly was nice. And I liked the inclusion of Clara's younger brother Benjy - who has hearing difficulties and wears a hearing aid to compensate, uses sign language and has trouble speaking because he can't quite make the same sounds. I liked that it was generally just treated as normal rather than an issue. I found it the inclusion of Mud being deaf to be an interesting choice. I'm not really sure how they were going to train him or curb his excessive behaviour as is and it's not really explained either. I would've liked to see how that was going to be addressed.

Overall it's not a bad book with some funny moments. Probably not the best children's choice out there but it's a decent read for avid booklovers and animals alike. 3 stars.