Both Sides Now: Trapped by Laurie Halse Anderson

I know we shouldn't be doing this. Dr. Mac and my parents would be furious if they knew. But I can't help myself. I'm too furious not to do it. Maggie feels the same way. She was really upset and angry about what happened to Chico.

That's why we're here in the woods, hiding behind a boulder. Maggie and I talked about it at lunch today at school, and we agreed. We have to find the creep who set the trap that caught the dog.

When Brenna Lake discovers a stray dog near death in a hunter's trap in the nature preserve, her first thought is to get the wounded animal to Dr. Mac's Place, the vet hospital where she volunteers with her best friend Maggie Mackenzie. Although Dr. Mac, Maggie's grandmother, has to amputate the damaged leg, the dog, which the girls name Chico, begins to recover, and Brenna turns her attention to discovering the identity of the illegal trapper.

Again hiding near the disabled trap where she found Chico, Brenna finds herself confronting a teenaged boy who comes back to reset the trap. Armed with a holstered pistol, the boy, Billy Morrison, angrily defends his right to trap on the land where the Morrison family has always hunted, and frightened by the confrontation, Brenna and Maggie run away and report the crime to the sheriff.

When Brenna tells her family about the incident in the woods, her teen brother Sage, who has become a radical animal rights activist, storms out in anger, and Brenna's family fears that he will urge his group to take violent "direct action" revenge against the young trapper.

But when Brenna learn that Billy has only received a small fine, she and the other vet volunteers determine to pay Billy Morrison a visit and talk him into giving up trapping for good. There they find Billy about to shoot a trapped fawn, and Brenna realizes that the only chance to save the little deer involves calling her volatile brother to drive the victim to Dr. Mac. Surprisingly, Billy asks to come along, and as the two wait for the fawn to be treated, she learns that he traps fur animals to help support his family, and Brenna surprises herself when she suddenly sees his actions from his point of view.

Laurie Halse Anderson's just published new edition of her Trapped #8 (Vet Volunteers) is a fast-moving story with a bit of mystery and suspense which will appeal to middle readers. With realistic moral complexity and family conflict and a well foreshadowed resolution added to the basic animal rescue plot, it is one of the best written books in this excellent and highly readable series.

Taking Another Look: Teacher's Pet by Laurie Halse Anderson

Gran was right. Middle school is not as bad as I thought it would be.

It's worse.

My locker is two miles away from my classes, so I have to lug my books in a backpack all day. Each book feels like it weights fifty pounds.

All my teachers give us homework. I'm never going to get through it all, not even if I work all weekend. I wish I could go home right now and never come back.

But not yet. I have to suffer through one more class: science.

It began as a great summer for Maggie Mackenzie, helping out with her friends at her grandmother's veterinary clinic and going to the beach with the Vet Volunteers. But the final days of summer have been spoiled by the thoughts of starting seventh grade at John C. Calhoun Middle School.

Maggie's not anxious about having friends--her fellow volunteers, Brenna, Zoe, Sunita, and David, will be there too. But Maggie's knows she's not good at school: her reading is still a problem and she only finished sixth grade because Gran forced her to buckle down and work with a tutor to raise her grades. Now she has five teachers, each piling on more work than there was in sixth grade altogether. Maggie struggles with the fear that she's just not smart enough to make it through middle and high school, much less college and vet school as she had hoped.

But science class is a surprise. For openers, there is a dog in the classroom--a beautiful German Shepherd named Scout--and a long row of cages filled with mice, gerbils, hamsters, and a rabbit that she and the volunteers offer to care for. But the teacher, Mr. Carlson, is the big surprise. The dog, Scout, is there as his guide dog. Maggie learns that Carlson has been working with Scout only a week, and "dog whisperer" that she is, Maggie senses that Scout is anxious for the love and approval from his master which he is not getting.

That weekend, as Maggie struggles with her overwhelming school work, Mr. Carlson shows up at her grandmother's veterinary clinic, Dr. Mac's Place, remorseful because in his anxiety over being lost in the school building he has stepped on Scout's foot. As Gran treats the cut paw, Maggie learns that her teacher is also struggling with his new situation, having recently lost his sight and been forced to try to teach with the help of a service dog.

When Maggie fails her first science pop quiz, Mr. Carlson is empathetic with her feelings about the stepped-up requirements of middle school and promises to work with Gran and the school counselor to make sure that she learns and keeps up with her work. But it is not until Mr. Carlson and Scout are hit by a careless motorist and Scout suffers near fatal injuries that teacher and pupil realize that the changes required by their new situations are alike in many ways. As Mr. Carlson offers Maggie advice, she realizes that he is also speaking about his own problems from the heart.

Some kids make the adjustment to middle school with no problems. They make it look easy. But most of the kids I know stumble over something. They lose friends; they get cut from a team, or they run up against a tough subject for the first time. There are all kinds of obstacles. You need some help learning to go around them.

We'll do whatever it takes--arrange for extra help during study hall, help you with study skills, test your reading skills. You aren't stupid, Maggie. You just need--a guide.

Award-winning author Laurie Halse Anderson's Teacher's Pet #7 (Vet Volunteers), (Puffin, 2009) now in a just-published paperback edition, offers an empathetic and unique look at the oft-portrayed middle school scene in this second book about Maggie Mackenzie, first introduced in Fight for Life #1 (Vet Volunteers). Like the other protagonists in this series, Maggie is a believable and appealing character whose love and desire for the humane care for animals gives her life meaning and direction, but who nonetheless deals daily with the problems of growing up and succeeding in school. Adult figures are also realistically presented, many (but not all) with good qualities, but who also confront the small and large problems that life brings. Incidental information about the training of guide dogs at the famous Seeing Eye facility add to the interest of this book.

Teacher's Pet #7 (Vet Volunteers),is another capable entry in an outstanding series for animal-loving 'tween readers. For other wildly popular books about young veterinary assistants, see Ben Baglio's prolific Animal Ark series.

Vet Cadet: Trickster by Laurie Halse Anderson

Children's librarians are of two minds about series fiction. Some regard most of them as ho-hum, pedestrian little novels which have the virtue of luring the lazy or timid reader with their familiar characters and plot lines. But then there are the BIG series, Narnia by C.S. Lewis, Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, even the Misty books by Marguerite Henry, which have sustained a fictional world over many well-written sequels.

So when a Newbery Honor author like Laurie Halse Anderson (for Fever 1793) turns up with fair-sized paperback line of pet-centered stories, the hope is that the books will be well-written, with believable plots and creditable characters. Her new Vet Volunteers series meets these expectations solidly.

For example, a recent entry in this set, Trickster #3 (Vet Volunteers) offers, for a refreshing change, a boy who loves horses and riding. Volunteering at a neighborhood veterinary clinic during the summer after a not-so-great fourth-grade year, David Hutchinson is an energetic, brash, and sometimes impulsive kid who is eager to find a way to return to horseback riding, in which he excelled before his parents divorced and his dad moved far away.

We're on cleaning duty today at Dr. Mac's Place, the veterinary clinic across the street from my house. I always knew I'd end up working here. I'm close by, I'm great with animals, and people love me. It took a few years of pestering Dr. Mac, the vet, but she finally caved in.

When a nearby stable owner offers riding lessons in return for barn work by Dr. Mac's vet volunteers, David falls in love with Mr. Quinn's newest horse, a flashy quarter horse named Trickster. Trickster has a minor leg wound from a transporting accident, and David, who has been out of favor with Quinn since he got himself and his mount lost on a trail ride the year before, offers to walk Trickster twice daily until his wound heals.

Quinn reluctantly agrees to give David another chance, but when David's habit of lazy shortcuts and thoughtless actions causes a horse to run away with a novice rider and results in a serious re-injury to Trickster's leg, Quinn has no choice but to bar him from further contact with the stable's horses, especially his favorite.

Typically, David can't manage to stay away from the stable, and when he sneaks out late at night to check on Trickster, he finds Dr. Mac, Quinn, and the other hands in the middle of a mystery epidemic threatening all the horses, and David realizes that he may have a vital clue to the nature of the illness.

With a just-right mix of adventure and personal insight for the main character, this set looks to have strong appeal to the animal-absorbed elementary readers who have made Ben Baglio's British series Animal Ark so very popular. Like Baglio's novels, each features a different animal, from endangered sea mammals in Manatee Blues #4 (Vet Volunteers) to lost kittens, Homeless #2 (Vet Volunteers) Each novel features a different member of Dr. Mac's Vet Volunteers, an intelligent and diverse group of five kids brought together by their love and desire to care for animals.