The Great Eye - Hardcover

Grade 3-6-Lucy Rising has always wanted a dog, and during the summer after seventh grade, she has the chance to raise a year-old black Labrador to become a guide dog for the blind. This seems a good project, as her sister Anna is home from college with a too-attentive new boyfriend, her mother is busy being a day-camp counselor, and her father has left the family and gone to Australia. So the arrival of Hobart promises to bring welcome companionship, and Lucy is rather disappointed when the canine turns out to be fearful and lacking in self-confidence. With the help of her best friend, she drills Hobart in the risk-taking exercises from the guide-dog training class, mirroring the risk-taking she also faces in adjusting to new realities in her family. Throughout the novel, she reflects on her life by writing free verse of an unusually wise and perceptive nature on the computer (The Great Eye) that her father left her. Her poetry allows her to express ambivalence about the animal's failure to qualify as a guide dog, as well as the news that her father is returning to seek a divorce. There are no surprises here, and none of the characters is particularly memorable. It is the quality of the poetry and the deft integration of the guide-dog training regimen that are the highlights of this quiet story of a family coping with change.
Susan W. Hunter, Riverside Middle School, Springfield, VT
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

With her sister back from college with a new boyfriend and her mom and dad separated, a disheartened Lucy thinks has only two supports she can count on-her friend Calvin and her computer, which she calls The Great Eye and which she uses to compose her poetry. Then she gets a chance to raise a puppy for Guiding Eyes for the Blind. Shalant (Beware of Kissing Lizard Lips) contributes keenly observed scenes about Lucy's developing relationship with the labrador retriever, Hobart; later, Lucy's attempts to get the timid dog to crawl through a dark tunnel so he can pass the guide dog test parallel her own struggle to get through the dark place in her life. Not quite 13, Lucy can intellectualize her problems in her poems: "I'm afraid there's no cure for what this house has got/ Termites? I asked. Dry rot?/ Memories, he told me straight out/ Spread to every floorboard sill and rail." Her behavior, however, is much less controlled: she is so furious at her father that when he sends her letters, she tears them up in little pieces and swallows them. On the other hand, readers who don't already share Lucy's interest in poetry may find the frequent examples of her writing and her references to Emily Dickinson off-putting, despite Shalant's insightful characterizations and sturdy plot. Ages 11-up.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.