Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Stubby the War Dog:  The True Story of World War I’s Bravest Dog looked like a fascinating story–after all, how many dogs got their own uniforms while basically serving in WWI?  Unfortunately, the premise was more fascinating than the book.  Part of it was most certainly the writing–Ann Bausum overdid the “it was likely/it might have been so/we can imagine such-a-thing happening” comments–but to be fair, it seemed like there may have been a dearth of primary sources during the most interesting time periods.  I’m going to give one more of her books a chance to see if it makes a difference, but as for this one…

There is interesting information here, certainly.  There are impressive illustrations that complement that information.  Unfortunately, the information would have been better presented by an author skilled in the art of writing middle grade non-fiction.  (Russell Freedman, Susan Campbell Bartoletti, and Jim Murphy come to mind!)  If you desperately want to learn about Stubby, I’d explore some other options before settling on this book.