Dog Star by Megan Shepherd

"If we can't stop the rocket, maybe we can get Laika out. We can't let her go on a mission with no chance of return. She isn't like the equipment you have in that capsule. 

She's a living creature."

Nina is old to enough to begin to question her life in the Soviet Union. Her best friend, along with her friend's parents, have recently defected to the US. Nina herself is being trained to be a good Soviet citizen. Her father works for the Institute of Space Medicine. The space race is in full swing. The Russians are desperate to be first. The Americans are planning to use monkeys and mice but in Russia a small stray dog is selected and trained. 

Meanwhile we meet a street dog, later to be named Laika. She longs to become a warm dog but when she is captured, she is taken to a strange place and put into a cage. Sharing this space are two other dogs. One has already been sent into space so she explains the three tests that Laika will undergo and how, if she can pass these tests, and travel into space the reward will be a real home with children to love her.

Bookseller blurb: Based on an incredible true story, Carnegie Medal nominee and New York Times-bestselling author Megan Shepherd crafts a harrowing, propulsive girl-and-her-dog tale that will linger in your heart long after the last page. Laika is a Cold Dog, a stray pup fighting for her life on the streets of Moscow. Then, one winter night, she is plucked from her alley to become a Starflyer, a dog trained to travel into space. Distrustful of people, Laika tries to do everything she can to escape. That is, until she meets Nina. Nina is a Cold Girl, lonely and full of questions. Her best friend has moved to America in a rush, leaving Nina to face the school bullies all by herself. Plus, her father's work as a scientist in the Soviet Space Program grows more secretive by the day. When the two meet in her father's laboratory, their growing bond slowly warms the chill that has settled in each other's hearts. As the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union grows fierce, Laika and Nina uncover shocking secrets and hard truths that will test their friendship. How will they find the courage to chase their dreams all the way to the stars?

Have you ever thought about the idea of warm dogs and cold dogs. Warm dogs live with a family. They are fed, allowed to be inside and even perhaps sit on a couch and most of all they are loved, especially by children. A cold dog is a street dog. A dog that lives by scavenging and a dog that works hard to survive extremes of heat and cold. And it sure is cold on the streets of Moscow. Laika was a cold dog until the day she was captured for use in the space program.

The title comes from the third voice in we hear in this story - we hear Laika beginning when she is just surviving on the streets of Moscow; we hear Nina who is so upset about the loss of her friend and we read about her struggles to cope with the Young Pioneers; and the third voice is the actual dog star - a voice of encouragement and wisdom that only Laika can hear. 

The ending of this book is inevitably very sad - perhaps if you are recommending this book to a reader in your library you might decide to explain this. Laika was a real dog. She was sent into space from the USSR in 1957. An enormous amount of work went into preparing her for the journey, but it seems almost no plans were made for her return. No one knows when or how but Laika did perish on the voyage.

There is a strange but fascinating inclusion in this book - the book is from a US author but she has included an article dated November 27th, 1957, from our Australian Women's Weekly magazine.

Here are a couple of text quotes:

"Nina felt a rush of confidence now. She sat up straighter. 'Yes dogs. I can help my father with the dogs who will be sent into space! ... Through this, um, I can make the Motherland proud."

"In a few days Laika will travel to the cosmodrome. I wanted to do something nice for her first. One night to have a home away from the Institute. To just be a dog; to bark and play.' He knelt down, scratching Laika behind the ears. 'Can you do that for her, lapochka?"

"So many questions buzzed in her head. Their teachers taught them to respect even street dogs but didn't respect the students enough to tell them the truth. Maybe Ludmilla's family had left because they didn't feel safe in a country where information was so often kept secret. Now, like Ludmilla, would Laika disappear forever too?"

You can hear Megan Shepherd talking about her book here. Dog Star was published in 2023 but I picked up my copy in a bookshop earlier this year. 

The narrative alternates between Nina’s and Laika’s points of view; Laika’s perspective is anthropomorphized with inner monologue as well as dialogue between dogs, and this works to the story’s advantage in arousing sympathy for the small animal who was sacrificed for science. A poignant story that accessibly illuminates a milestone in space exploration history. Kirkus

Read more about animal astronauts here. Companion books:

I previously read Secret Horses of Briar Hill by Megan Shepherd:

The Secret Horses of Briar Hill

The Keeper of the Octopus by Neridah McMullin

"Every child in the village grew up hearing the tale. It was folklore. A long time ago a shark attacked a Portablow fishing boat as a it sailed up the river with its catch. A giant octopus who lived at the river mouth fought with the shark, saving the fisherfolk and their livelihood. And from then on, an octopus had always lived at the river mouth to protect the fisherfolk from sharks. At least that was the story."

Pippy lives with her elderly great uncle. She desperately misses her mother who has died recently and also longs to talk to her father, but he has headed away to sea and has been gone for nine months. It is clear Uncle Isaac who is caring for her now, is suffering from memory loss. It has begun to feel dangerous to sail with him, but Pippy needs to do this because Uncle Isaac, like all the people in this village, rely on fishing for their income.

The village is near a cove and decades ago there was a problem with shark attacks. Pippy is sure this is not the fault of the sharks but rather a symptom of things being out of balance. There has always been the story about an octopus but surely this is just a folktale. Young Pippy discovers it is her own mother who has been the Keeper of the Octopus but now that her mother is gone destiny determines Pippy herself must now feed, care for, and learn to communicate with Octavia. Uncle Isaac gives Pippy a special talisman, a stone that she wears around her neck. It glows and helps her know when Octavia is near. She also has the diary written by generations of her ancestors which tells her how to care for and recognise the moods of the octopus. 

Then three brothers arrive in the village. They appear at first to be fishermen but then they bring back an enormous catch with all sorts of precious sea creatures - way more than the town could ever need. Pippy knows this is a wrong and dangerous practice and then she hears one of the men talking about Octavia and so she knows this will be a race against time to keep Octavia safe and to convince the town authorities that the Calamary brothers are dangerous. 

As with all great stories there were moments in this book when I gasped, when I cheered, and when I sighed. One special character, apart from young Pippy who is wise beyond her years, is her friend Wally.

"Wally had been born with a deformed foot, a foot that turned inwards and downwards, worsening as he grew older, which meant he couldn't walk very fast nor go very far. Teased at school because of his limp, Wally stuttered a little when he spoke. He never said much. But he was a child who noticed things, small things."

And there is an element of magical realism because Pippy and her uncle live with a family brownie named Ferg. He tends to the house and the cooking. I loved his way of talking he always addresses her by saying - Pippy Cocklebiddy, daughter of Claudine and he uses words like bairn, Mither, orright, and nowt. He reminded me a little of Dobbie from the Harry Potter series. 

Here are a couple of text quotes:

"There were masses of bluefin tuna, black bream, tommy ruff and kingfish; hundreds of snapper, flathead, silver perch, and graylings; and many smaller good eating fish such as garfish, whiting, salmon and trevally. There were even parrot fish, which Pippy thought was odd because everyone knew they were inedible. Portablow fishers always tossed them back into the sea. The brother hauled even more baskets onto the wharf, tipping out dozens of sharks, Bronze whalers, and even a huge basking shark ... It was beautiful but its bright blue eyes quickly faded to a dull grey, dead colour."

"Pippy felt heavy with sadness. Uncle Isaac's memory was getting worse. He'd just put both their lives in terrible danger. It was as if his brain was erasing everything he'd ever known, including her, and that was what hurt the most. She had to do more to help him, more to look after him, but she wasn't sure how much more she could do unless she was with him for every minute of every day."

This book is certain to be a 2026 CBCA Notable title in the Younger Readers category. Here is the web page for Neridah McMullin. Here is a link to some detailed Teachers Notes.  I have previously talked about Eat my Dust; Drover; Tearaway coach; Fabish the horse that braved a Bushfire; and Evie and Rhino. 

Publisher blurb for The Keeper of the Octopus: Since her father sailed away, Uncle Isaac is the only family Pippy has left. Together they spend their days fishing off the coast, until one day Pippy is knocked into the sea and rescued by a gentle, giant creature … Uncle Isaac knows it’s time to tell Pippy the truth. Pippy is the descendent of a long line of Keepers – the Keeper of the Octopus, responsible for the giant octopus who protects the fisherfolk of the village. At first, Pippy is hesitant to meet Octavia, but soon the octopus is sharing her dreams with Pippy and they recognise each other as kindred spirits. But when the Calamary Brothers come to Portablow, she learns of their search for a particular giant octopus. It's up to Pippy - and her rag-tag crew of a cat, a dog, a hobgoblin called Ferg and an albatross – to rescue Octavia from the Calamary’s clutches.

I was enthralled by this book, because it captured a timeless world with a touch of magic, coupled with a commentary on some of the issues we face today: grief, environmental issues, bullying and disability. Wally was such a cool character too, and I loved his friendship with Pippy, and that he believed her without question. This is the mark of a true friendship. It was one that I loved, and one that I think kids need to see more of in the books they read. And it’s another reason I love reading kids’ books, because they feel less judgmental and more accepting. The Book Muse

Companion books:

My Friend the Octopus

Song of a Thousand Seas

Tweet by Morris Gleitzman

"Sometimes going viral can be a good thing. You and Clyde are heroes. A boy and a budgie bravely protecting thousands of birds. Standing in the way of giant trucks 

that want to squish them. How totally inspiring is that?"

All readers judge books by their covers and then the author's name (if it is familiar) and then the blurb. Begin with the one-word title. Tweet is a word we all associate with Twitter and the internet and the spreading of informed and uninformed ideas. Perhaps we also think of this as the chatter, often mindless, of social media.  Now look more closely at the cover and you can see a boy in silhouette with a small yellow and green budgie (bird). Then zoom in even closer and the speech bubble which contains the word tweet is shown coming from the bird not the boy. This is intriguing. Now onto the author. I guess most Australian young readers and nearly all Australian teachers and Teacher-Librarians have heard, and also have read, a book to two by Morris Gleitzman. After all he started writing in 1987. His first book was The Other Facts of Life. In 1987 I had been working in my first school library in a small country town for just two years. From then on we collected every book he wrote and I read nearly all of them. In fact he is the author of over forty titles. See the covers of most of these at the end of this post. 

The one thing that distinguishes a Morris Gleitzman book, from books by other writers, is his unique 'voice'. I use the term naive protagonist. In this book Clyde (he is the budgie from the front cover) and Jay, both have this 'voice' albeit one is a boy, and one is a bird. I probably should spend more time thinking about why the bird has a human name and the boy is named after a bird but that might relate to the fact that Jay's parents are ornithologists. 

In a pattern you are sure to have encountered in many, many books, Jay's parents are absent. In fact, they are missing. They set off for Africa to study birds and they have not returned and no one seems to be able to contact them. The mission to find the lost parents is one of the issues that drives the plot of this book. There is one other adult in Jay's life, but Morris Gleitzman removes him from the story very early on - spoiler alert - sadly Poppa is taken to hospital where he dies. That neatly sets up the plot of Jay and Clyde and later a few other unlikely friends who now have to 'save the world'.

The other issue that keeps you turning the pages of this long book (348 pages) is the mystery of the other birds who keep showing up in their hundreds disrupting human activities. This is happening in the city where Jay lives but later we discover it is happening around the world. Why are the birds stopping traffic? Do they have a message? Yes they do. Humans need to listen but birds and humans do not speak the same language. Luckily Clyde is part human because he has been a pet. He can 'talk' to Jay and over time he learns how to communicate with other wild birds. It is also Clyde who makes the most important friends - a bird named Dora (she is a galah) and another bird - a Kea. Just in case you don't know a kea is a large parrot from New Zealand. 

The birds are showing up to highlight the environmental issues facing our world today. This reminded me of this brilliant book by Christopher Cheng (another well-known Australian author).

Morris Gleitzman explains about the environmental issues he raises in his book:

But it doesn't end there. You'll notice that, as well as all these other problems, Tweet contains one other problem that's so big, none of the characters know how to solve it. Not even Jay and Clyde's friends Maxine and Dora, who are super-smart. Please don't fret. Not every problem in a story has to be solved by the last page. Sometimes just discovering new ways to think about problems is the biggest adventure of all.

I mentioned this is a long book, but the chapters are very, very short and the viewpoints keep alternating between Jay and Clyde, so I found myself swept along with the story and I was easily able to finish the whole book over a couple of days. I think you will need to explain this to your library readers because the size of this book might daunt them but really there are so many funny, almost laugh out loud, moments and Clyde especially is such an endearing character I do think young readers aged 10+ will really enjoy this book. And it is sure to make them curious to read other books by Morris Gleitzman beyond his World War II series. 

Publisher blurb: Birds. Lots of birds. The people of the world are puzzled. Their feathered friends are trying to tell them something, and they’re not sure what it is. Then a boy and his pet budgie discover the secret. Join Jay and Clyde, and their friends Maxine and Dora, on an exciting, funny, risky journey to save their families. And every other family too.

Here are a few text quotes which I was pleased to see were also mentioned in the teachers notes (see below):

"I know you're fresh out of the cage ... but don't be a dope. This is what we birds do. We look out for each other, right?"

"Something terrible's happening. Huge numbers of birds have started acting crazy. Putting themselves in crazy danger."

"The birds are making a big nuisance of themselves to punish humans for being so cruel. And they don't have a clue how much more cruel that'll make humans be towards them."

"Leaders have two basic things ... Ideas and armies. And the armies are usually bigger than the ideas."

Here are some very detailed teachers notes with discussion questions from the publisher. 

Check out some reviews:

• Readings Melbourne
• What book Next?
• Kids' Book Review
• Story Links

Companion books:

The 7 Professors of the Far North

The Last Bear

Melt

The Doldrums

Flight of the Phoenix

Pearly and Pig 

The Someday Birds

Books by Morris Gleitzman: