This narrative is an animal story that feels very familiar, a la Gary Paulsen's The Haymeadow or Wilson Rawls's Where the Red Fern Grows, but it's also very unfamiliar, in that it focuses on a 13 yo half-Navajo, half-white protagonist whose older sister has just been deployed to Iraq. I welcome this blend of old- and newness.

It's a book that says 10+ on its flap copy, but I am definitely keeping it in my middle grade section.