Listen! / Stephanie S. Tolan.

Select an Action

Title:

Author:

Tolan, Stephanie S.

ISBN:

9780060579357

9780060579371

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.

Physical Description:

197 p.; 22 cm.

General Note:

2009-2010 YHBA Nominee

Abstract:

During her solitary convalescence from a crippling accident, twelve-year-old Charley finds a wild dog, and the arduous process of training him leads her to explore her feelings about her mother's death two years earlier.

Subject Term:

Dogs -- Training -- Juvenile fiction.

Accidents -- Juvenile fiction.

Mothers -- Juvenile fiction.

Death -- Juvenile fiction.

Geographic Term:

Charlotte (N.C.) -- Juvenile fiction.

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Juvenile Fiction Book Hardback	120791001824074	J TOL	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Juvenile Fiction Book Paperback	120791001910159	J TOL	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Learning to walk again is the easy part.

For twelve-year-old Charley, recovering from the accident that shattered her leg is nowhere near as difficult as facing the solitude of a summer without her best friend and with a father who does nothing, now, but work. Solitude means time to think, time to hear for the first time the awful silence left in her world two years ago by her mother's death.

But the summer holds a surprise for Charley, in the form of a mysterious dog who appears in the woods across the lake from her home. In order to connect with this wild spirit she names Coyote, Charley will have to do more than just walk. She will have to follow Coyote into the heart of her memories: the woods her mother loved so much. And she will have to learn to listen past the silence.

This unsentimental, unforgettable story comes straight from the heart of Newbery Honor author Stephanie S. Tolan. As she describes Charley's difficult emotional and physical journey, she weaves together themes of nature, family, and love into a complex and powerful portrait of recovery.

Reviews (4)

School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-8-Charley's mother died just a short time ago, and, still raw with grief, the 12-year-old is faced with a miserable summer recuperating from a car accident that has left her with a slowly healing leg. Her best friend is spending the summer at tennis camp, and her father has buried himself in work because of his own pain. Her "physical terrorist" insists that she starts walking so she decides to make her way around a nearby lake. The woods hold too many memories of her mother and her nature photography so she's avoided that area up till now. On her first day out, she encounters a stray dog. She names him Coyote and sets out to see if she can tame him. The girl and the dog have an almost psychic connection; Charley can feel the trauma Coyote has been through even as he helps her to heal physically as well as emotionally. Even Charley's dad opens up. This is a sweet, gentle story of healing and the strong bond that can develop between humans and animals. The lovely imagery and involving plot should appeal to more than just animal lovers.-Diana Pierce, Running Brushy Middle School, Cedar Park, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Horn Book Review

(Intermediate) Grievously injured twice in two years, first by the death of her mother and then in a car accident, twelve-year-old Charley is emotionally and physically disabled. In the summer after sixth grade, Charley begins, painfully, to learn to walk again. She won't, however, walk in the woods she roamed with her nature-photographer mother throughout her childhood, just as she won't look at her photographs or even think about her much. It's a dog who lures Charley out of her inward-looking state, a wild dog who clearly needs food and care but won't come near enough to accept help. Charley consults people and books but finds that she must use her own sensitivity to figure out how best to approach the wary animal. Charley must be satisfied with tiny gains for the most part, but as the dog she dubs Coyote becomes more trusting, Charley also begins to open herself up -- to memories of her mother and to the solace of nature. This gentle tale features Tolan's graceful way with words and her acute observations of the natural world, dogs in particular. Its slow pace and focus on description will not grip all readers, but those willing to take the time to savor the experience will be rewarded. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

In the hands of a less-talented author, the story of a half-wild dog and the heartbroken girl who tames him might have descended into saccharine sentimentality. Luckily, Tolan's tale, although somewhat predictable, is well-written and engaging. Charlene, known as Charley, is a sixth-grader recovering from the effects of a recent car accident and still unable to accept the death of her mother two years earlier. Cared for by her distant, workaholic father and a housekeeper, Charley resents the changes in her life and initially resists her father's attempts to encourage her to spend more time outdoors. When she sees a strange dog, however, her interest is piqued and she begins to exercise regularly in her efforts to get close to him. Tolan's decision to use the present tense adds suspense and immediacy. The long, drawn-out process of taming the dog, which Charley names Coyote, is clearly described and will likely enthrall dog lovers. Charley's emotional recovery is handled more delicately, allowing readers to discern thematic parallels without feeling manipulated. Touching and heartwarming. (Fiction. 11-14) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Gr. 4-7. The approaching summer looms bleakly over 12-year-old Charley. Her best friend has left for tennis camp, her father's 80-hour workweek ensures he never has time for her, and she still mourns the death of her mother, a nature photographer who died in a plane crash two years earlier. Charley, who is recovering from a recent car accident, is frustrated with the long hikes she must take to strengthen her injured leg. But on one such walk she meets Coyote, a shy, intelligent stray, and through the process of taming and opening her heart to the dog, Charley learns to feel again and comes to terms with her mother's death. The pacing is slow and thoughtful, the descriptions of nature are evocative, and a touch of magic realism in Charley and Coyote's relationship will charm readers who imagine their own mystical connections with pets. Pair this with Ann M. Martin's A Dog's Life (2005) for another story about a stray, a popular middle-school topic. --Jennifer Hubert Copyright 2006 Booklist

Excerpts

Listen! Chapter One Dog Charley is halfway across the dam, sweat dripping down her back under her T-shirt, when her father drives past her on his way back to work. She doesn't look at him. As slowly as he is driving, the car still kicks up gray-white dust from the gravel road. She walks through the dust, as straight and tall as she can make herself, jamming her walking stick into the stones as she goes, trying not to limp. She is walking. It is what he wants, and she is doing it. But if he's so interested in the best thing for her, why can't he let her decide what that is? "I won't have you sitting in that chair all summer!" he yelled when she refused to come sit with him and eat the lunch Sarita had to scramble to fix when he showed up suddenly, unexpectedly, in the middle of the workday. "Summer hasn't even started yet," she yelled back. "It's the last day of school -- for kids who are in school," he said. You'd think it was her fault that she isn't in school, finishing the sixth grade with everybody else! "You only have ten weeks to build up your strength and be ready when school starts again. You are to get outside today. It's time, Charlene! Your physical therapist says you're healing well and a little exercise is all you need to get back to normal. You will start by walking. Today. Is that clear?" He was using his I-am-the-boss voice that keeps a factory full of workers in line. She lowered the footrest of the recliner chair, picked up her walking stick from the floor, and got to her feet as gracefully as she could. Without a word she went down the hall to her room and put on her sneakers. Then, pounding the stick on the floor as she went, she walked straight through the living room and the dining room, out the sliding glass door, and down the ramp he had had built over the stairs her second week in the hospital. Her father was at the breakfast table in the lake room when she left, waving his fork in the air as he talked into his cell phone. He might have taken time to come home for lunch, but he hadn't really left his work, Charley thinks as his car moves up the hill on the other side of the dam and disappears around the curve. It's what her father does -- work. Normal for him means his eighty-hour workweek. By the time the dust from his car settles, Charley has reached the end of the dam, where there is a bench under a willow tree by the water. She could sit there in the shade awhile, looking at Eagle Lake, its ripples glittering in the sun. She could rest her leg and then go home again. But she keeps walking, up the slope of the road. She can walk all right. She is done with the wheelchair. Done with crutches. The "miracle" of the rod the doctors stuck into the bone in her right leg from her hip to her knee means she has never had to wear a cast. By now all there is to show for what happened to her is the scar down her leg where they put the rod in. And the walking stick she made so she wouldn't have to use the stupid old-lady-looking cane Tony, her physical terrorist, tried to give her after the crutches. Her father wants her back to normal. Normal. What is that? Is that what her life was the first week in March? Before her friend Amy's brother Travis gave them a ride home from school that rainy Monday afternoon? Before he got to showing off and playing NASCAR driver? Before what the papers called a "one-car accident" that was really one car and one tree? She can't remember the accident that put her in the hospital and ended the school year for her. She can't even remember the first few days after it. The doctors say, because of the concussion, she probably never will. If there is one thing she's learned for sure in her twelve years of life, it is that you can't go back to the way things used to be. No matter how much you want to. You can't go back. Somehow or other, you have to keep going forward. It's just that she hasn't figured out yet how to do that. Whether she spends the whole summer in the recliner chair or out here walking the hot, dusty road around Eagle Lake, it can't be like the last two summers. This summer can't be Charley and Amy at Amy's house swimming in Amy's pool, playing tennis, going to movies, hanging out at the mall, spending whole days at a time at Carrowinds amusement park with Amy's family. Because this summer Travis is working to pay his father back for the car he wrecked. And Amy . . . Amy . . . Charley stabs her walking stick into the gravel, and a little puff of dust rises into the air. She has reached the split where the gravel road that is Eagle Lake Drive goes straight ahead, past the caretaker's house and out to the paved county road, and also right, through the woods toward the south side of the lake. She turns right and keeps walking. Where the road splits again -- right to the four houses closest to the dam and left to the rest of the houses on the south side of the lake -- she goes left. Trees nearly meet over her head -- thick woods on one side, woods with houses on the other. She goes on stabbing her walking stick into the gravel, goes on making the little puffs of dust. Amy, her best friend since second grade, is going off to spend the whole summer at Lake George in upstate New York with Becky Sue Lindner. . . . Listen! . Copyright © by Stephanie Tolan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Listen! by Stephanie S. Tolan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.