Listen!

Charley knows a lot about pain. She endures it when she walks on her newly shattered leg, she sees it when her father buries himself in an eighty-hour work week, and she runs from it when she sees photographs her mother took before her death. Then one day, Charley meets a wild, abused dog that knows as much about pain as she does, and, despite herself, she feels an immediate connection and vows to help him. But how will one heartbroken girl help mend the battered spirit of an untamable dog?

Children's Literature

Three months after breaking her leg in a car accident, twelve-year-old Charley goes for a walk around a nearby lake. Along the way she sees a frightened stray dog. Their eyes meet and Charley feels something special pass between them. That same day Charley gets her workaholic father's permission to tame the wild spirit that she names Coyote. During the taming process, Charley's repressed emotions are released when they walk the same woods trails that her late mother used to photograph. She hears her mother's voice telling her to listen to nature. At last Charley is able to enter her mother's photography studio and study her work. Coyote's friendship helps Charley cherish her mother's memory, appreciate each day, and eagerly anticipate the future. This well-written novel will hold the reader's interest from start to finish. Charley's character demonstrates how to deal successfully with her emotional and physical pain--her mother's death two years earlier, her father's eighty-hour work week, a car accident, and her best friend's desertion to summer camp. Charley's feelings of rejection and isolation shift to exhilaration when she meets Coyote. The author's portrayal of their mutually healing friendship is heartwarming. Tolan's picture perfect imagery will have readers feeling like they are right there with Charley and Coyote.

Stephanie S. Tolan is the author of more than twenty books for young readers, including Welcome to the Ark, Flight of the Raven, and the Newbery Honor–winning novel Surviving the Applewhites. She lives on a little lake in a big woods in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband (Bob), two dogs (Coyote and Samantha), two fish (Blanche and Noir), and plenty of outdoor creatures.