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I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the WALKIN’ THE DOG by Chris Lynch Blog Tour
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hosted by Rockstar Book Tours.
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Check out my review and make sure to enter the giveaway!
WALKIN’ THE DOG
Author: Chris Lynch
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Pub. Date: March 12, 2024
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Formats: Hardcover, eBook
Pages: 240
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Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/WALKIN-THE-DOG
“Lynch is back and better, smarter, and funnier than ever.” —Jacqueline
Woodson, National Book Award Winner
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A boy learns how to be a friend from man’s best friend in this funny and
moving middle grade novel about humans being able to change and dogs changing
us from acclaimed author Chris Lynch.
In a family of strong personalities with very strong points of
view, Louis is what his mother lovingly calls “the inactivist,” someone who’d
rather kick back than stand out. He only hopes he can stay under the radar when
he starts high school in the fall, his first experience with public school
after years of homeschooling.
But when a favor for a neighbor and his stinky canine companion unexpectedly
turns into a bustling dog-walking business, Louis finds himself meeting an
unprecedented number of new friends—both human and canine. Agatha, a quippy and
cagey girl his age always seems to be telling two truths and a lie. Cyrus, a
few years his senior, promises he’s going to show Louis how to be a better
person, whether Louis wants him to or not. And then there are the dogs:
misbehaving border terriers, the four (possible stolen) sausage dogs, the rest
of Louis’s charges, and a mysterious white beast who appears at a certain spot
at the edge of the woods.
Dogs and human alike all seem to have something they want to teach Louis,
including his menacing older brother who keeps turning up everywhere. But is
Louis ready to learn the lesson he needs most: how to stop being a lone wolf
and be part of a pack?
MY REVIEW
I’m a firm believer in dogs bringing out the best in those who choose to pay heed to them. Mostly by accident, Louis winds up walking dogs the summer before he leaves homeschooling behind and enters public high school. They have a lot to teach him, and so do Cy and Aggie, just two of the people he meets while walking the dogs.
I found this book both educational and just plain fun. The characters were so true to life and the hurdles Louis had to concur were daunting yet doable. For an introvert like Louis, learning to poke his head out of his shell and socialize wasn’t easy. The author brought him to life for me and included some strong side characters that made me excited to turn each page and see how things panned out.
And a shout out to the author for giving the dogs as much characters as the humans who, by the way, have some quirky, hilarious tags that go with their personalities. Got some snickers out of me. I have someone in mind to share this book with. I think he’d enjoy the characters and life lessons as much as I did.
5 STARS
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Enjoy this peek inside:
- The Inactivist
IT’S STILL DARK OUT WHEN MY DAD WAKES ME UP.
Things are supposed to go a certain way, and this is not that way. He’s a commercial fisher, and so should be out of the house for several hours already by the time I wake up. When I get myself up, which I’m perfectly capable of doing.
“Louis,” he says, leaning way down close and misting me with coffee and bran muffin and fig and orange breath. Fortunately, I love my father and his relatively healthy diet. Later, he smells different. Fisherfolk, yeah?
“I need you, son.”
This, along with the darkness, and the absence of my mother from the house, is a bit unsettling.
My dad doesn’t need me, or anybody else, really. At least he’s never said so before. He’s very seafaring that way. It soothes me, his unneediness.
It’s technically not true, anyway. He doesn’t need me; somebody else does. But Dad needs that somebody else, so there you have it.
“I’m short a man today,” he says, “and Old Man Dan is the only guy around who knows what he’s doing and is also available to give me an honest day’s work.”
Old Man Dan is Mr. Evans. He’s one of those guys you hear about who have millions of “fish stories” about the one that got away and the biggest thing that ever swam the sea. Old Man Dan retired from actual shing without retiring any of the fish stories, or the scent. They say he’s got a thing called trimethylaminuria. They also say he reeks. Kind of guy my dad avoids in the street or the supermarket aisle on account of those stories more than the smell, so he must be in serious need of Dan’s assistance on this occasion if he’s prepared to listen to that stuff all day.
“Okay, can I ask why you’re telling me this, Dad?” I ask, without really wanting to ask it.
“Because Dan says he can only go out on the boat today if he can get somebody to look after Amos.”
Oh no.
Amos. Dan’s multi-breed mongrel, who seems less like a real dog and more like a cross between a portly dingo and a badger. Everybody but Dan refers to him as Anus, because of the smell, which reaches you about twenty-four hours before you’re anywhere near him.
“Oh, Dad . . .”
“Please, Louis. The poor thing can’t be alone for more than a few hours at a time, ever since Dan’s wife passed away. You understand, of course. . . .”
Ah, Dad. I mean, I don’t think he did it on purpose, but he did it. He can hardly be unaware that his wife, my mother, is in the hospital, as she has been for too many days the past year. He cannot be unaware, but he also cannot have meant to use that as a point of leverage in this conversation.
His fractured face tells me as much. He caught himself off balance just as badly as he did me.
“I’ll do it, Dad,” I say, brushing past him both impatiently and affectionately as I climb out of bed. He squeezes my arm, I squeeze his, and we both look away.
When I come out of the shower and make my way sluggishly to the kitchen table, it’s still not quite sunrise. My little sister, Faye, is eating a bowl of cereal by the dim, warm glow of the stovetop light. It’s a scene I’m not used to, and one I find unexpectedly pleasant. Faye can be a bit harsh under the full glare of day.
I’m thirteen, and Faye is eleven months younger. Irish twins, they call it, but we might as well be the regular kind. She’s as old as me in every other way, if not older. There’s a family legend that—because Faye was not exactly a planned baby—Dad wanted to name her Daisy. As in, whoops-a-daisy.
“Oh, for cryin’ . . . ,” Faye exclaims, letting her spoon fall out of her hand and clatter around the tabletop. She’s not really that shocked to see me at this hour, but it’s still a pretty good show.
I explain the situation to her, how Dad needs a fisher, and that fisher needs a dog sitter.
“Anus?” she asks, incredulous, but not really. “Well, I don’t know what you showered for, because that’s just soap and water down the drain.”
“Oh, he’s not that bad,” I say, because why not just let her swing away.
“Not that bad, Louis? Old Man Dan still smells like chum after all these years, and he remains only the second-raunchiest creature in that house. And you’re going over there? You know that’s what killed Old Lady Dan the Fishwife, don’t you? She died of stench. It was in the obituary. I read it.”
Always good value for money, my sister.
I shrug. It should be noted that I shrug a lot. It’s my official state gesture.
“I’m getting paid,” I say. “And Dad needs me to help him out. Those are two sound reasons. Throw in kindness to animals and we’re well into bonus territory.”
Felt like I was doing pretty well, for a homeschooled debater.
“Oh, you’re heading into bogus territory, all right,” she says. “Seriously bogus. And I love Dad, and animals, as much as you do. But you know what Ma would have to say about that other thing.”
I forgot that I wasn’t even the best debater in the house. “She’d say I should do it for free,” I moan. “But Ma would have everybody do everything for free, and that’s why we’re poor.”
“Oh, we’re not poor, Louis; we’re just normal.” “Yeah, well, poor is not gonna be my normal, I’ll tell you that.”
“Fine,” Faye says. “Tell me that if you need to tell me that. I need to tell you that Ma is expecting to see you today. So, while you’re walking the dog and grubbing the money, you also need to make time for a visit to your mother.” “I can do that.”
“Yeah, you can do that.”
“Yeah, Faye, that’s what I said.”
“Right, I was just helping. Sometimes you need help, to, y’know, do things.”
This is all so wrong. Not inaccurate, but wrong. “Come on, Faye. Not when it comes to Ma.”
Ma is a great many great things. Foremost among them is probably activist. She’s renowned for it. If there’s a cause that needs activist, she’s there, and always has been. To the detriment, one might say, of her personal health and well-being. She cares, about everything, more than a rational person should. In my opinion.
By contrast, I have a nickname, and it was first bestowed upon me by that very same activist Ma.
The Inactivist.
Kind of comical, and true enough, if not exactly flattering. I don’t much like getting involved.
“Would you have gone to see her today if I hadn’t reminded you?”
“Of course I would have. But, anyway, wasn’t today supposed to be your day?”
“Ha!” Faye says, pointing through the air between us sharply enough to nearly hurt my chest. Like she bagged me there. Which, possibly, she did.
“What, ‘ha’?” I say. “Today was definitely supposed to be your day.”
“What, because they’re all my day? Because I’m the girl?” My choices here, as I see them, are limited and not good. An honest answer to that does me no favors. Pausing too long while I come up with something better presents its own problems. It’s like verbal waterboarding, trying to argue with Faye.
I aim for her not inconsiderable heart as a viable option to battling her intellectually, which is no option at all. “Faye, I don’t like the hospital. It scares me.”
She slows down, out of kindness. I’d sort of prefer it if she sped up.
“I know, Louis. And I understand. But, too bad. And any way, it’s not a hospital, so stop calling it that.”
She’s half-right, which is about 50 percent less right than she usually is. Ma is staying at a place they call the Knoll. But the Knoll is on the grounds of, and functionally a part of, a whole hospital. It’s an inpatient program that lasts four weeks. She’s done this thing before. Later, if she still needs them, there are outpatient programs that also last four weeks. She won’t need them, though. I’m an optimist. Dad says I am pathologically optimistic. Meaning, I tend to believe that things are gonna work out, on their own, without any help from me, the way they should. Because they will, that’s why.
Ma is in the Knoll as a direct result of the fact that she cares too much. About everything.
That’s an insufficient explanation, probably.
She works at a shelter called A Woman’s Place. Doesn’t just work the place. Lives it. One of their managers. Often a night manager, which can be hard going. She’s a stellar person, a soldier. The single best person I’ve ever met, as a matter of fact. All the pain of A Woman’s Place—and that is a world of pain—is her pain.
She’s an inspiration to me. In a way she would never want to be.
Meaning, I’m determined that what happened to her will never happen to me.
The more streamlined story is, she was breaking up a fight at the shelter one night. In the course of things, she slipped and destroyed her knee. Shredded her ACL and MCL. Such is the esteem in which my mother is held in A Woman’s Place that everyone on the scene—including the two combatants—dropped everything in order to care for her on the spot.
That care took her eventually to City Medical Center. And to surgery. And to lots of rehab and physical therapy. And pain. Lots and lots of pain.
And painkillers.
Which isn’t an altogether accurate word, is it? Pain doesn’t die. I have seen pain, and I have never seen it die. So the pain got to my ma. And the painkillers got to the pain. Then the painkillers got to Ma.
But it wasn’t just the knee, was it?
Dad, who has a way with words for a fishsherdude, put it this way: Pain got to Ma. But the pain of pain got to her more. Everybody’s pain got to her.
She cares too much, is what he meant. Like I said.
She broke, is what happened.
The job did it to her. Then being o the job double-did it to her. She couldn’t stand being off the job—not helping out. Helping everybody but her.
“Please, Faye?” I say because I’m out of anything more convincing. “Can’t you do today?”
“I did yesterday,” she says.
“Yeah, but you could do today, right?”
“Right. I could. But I’m not going to.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want you to.”
“Aw, that’s just—”
“And because Ma wants you to.”
Rats. And rats and rats again.
“She didn’t actually say that. Did she actually say that?” “She actually said that, Louis. She wants to see you. And for you to see her. She knows you’re afraid.”
“And she wants to see me anyway.”
“Duh, Louis,” she says, and with those three syllables wraps up the discussion.
Duh, Louis. She wants to see me because I’m afraid. Not only because of that, but for sure it’ s partly because of that.
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About Author Chris Lynch:
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Chris Lynch (he/him/his)
is the award–winning author of several highly acclaimed young adult novels, including Printz Honor Book Freewill, Iceman, Gypsy
Davey, and Shadow Boxer—all ALA Best Books for Young Adults—as
well as Killing Time in Crystal City, Little Blue Lies, Pieces, Kill
Switch, Angry Young Man, and Inexcusable, which was
a National Book Award finalist and the recipient of six starred reviews. Chris is the author of middle grade novel Walkin’ the Dog. He holds an MA from the writing program at Emerson College. He teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Lesley University. He lives in Boston and in Scotland.
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Meet Chris!
Tuesday, March 12, 2024 at 7:00pm ET
Porter Square Books (Cambridge, MA)
In conversation with Sara Farizan
Wednesday, March 13, 2024 at 7:00pm ET
Broadside Bookshop (Northampton, MA)
In conversation with Michael Mercurio
Thursday, March 14, 2024 at 6:00pm ET
Books of Wonder (New York, NY)
In conversation with Caela Carter, Cathy Carr, and E.L. Shen
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1 winner will receive a finished copy of WALKIN’ THE DOG, US Only.
Ends March 12th, midnight EST.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Tour Schedule:
Week One:
Week Two:
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