Jean Ure

Reminiscent of Animal Ark, We Love Animals follows two tween girls, Clara and Jilly as they go about trying to make a difference for the animals they encounter.

In the third installment, Clara and Jilly are surprised when the school bully, Darren seeks them out. Darren found a mother cat and four kittens abandoned near the golf course and he's worried they're dead. The girls go with him to check but only two of the kittens are still breathing. They take them home and nurse them back to health.

Surprisingly their biggest advocate is Jilly's mum who not only agrees to take them on but goes above and beyond to take the kittens to the vet and then commits to two hourly feedings. I kind of got bored reading it to be honest, two hourly feeds were the focus of much of the book - it just felt repetitive and frankly this book felt extremely long compared to the other two books in the series.

Also Clara is a brat and I've lost patience with her since the last book. I hated Daffy Down Donkey and Clara doesn't particularly redeem herself for me. Or maybe I'm getting too old to read tween fiction. At least in this book the girls actually bother to check with the experts about how to care for the kittens before bumbling along.

The storyline with Clara's mum's boyfriend just felt unnecessary. Although I did enjoy the bit about Trevor the turkey - a random turkey that gets left on the doorstep. Trevor ends up in the paper because he was stolen from a couple on the other side of town. When she sees the article, Clara's mum calls them to let them know they took the turkey to a haven. They don't answer so she leaves a message. Clara ends up speaking to the wife when she calls. This bit is pretty funny - the wife says please don't call again - my husband bought the turkey for our Christmas dinner but I got attached and I couldn't bear to eat him so I dropped him off at your place. Then she has to hang up mid sentence because he presumably comes in. Lol. Nice. And I liked that Darren gets behind the saving the animal crusade to a tiny degree. He buys animal rescue Christmas cards. Overall, it's an alright read but Animal Ark is better done. 2 stars.… (mais)

Reminiscent of Animal Ark, We Love Animals follows two tween girls, Clara and Jilly as they go about trying to make a difference for the animals they encounter. In the second installment, the girls are horrified when they find a donkey they name Daffodil all alone in a field of rubbish, scrap metal with no shelter and no nearby grass. They desperately want to help so they begin by visiting with food and clearing the field so Daffodil can walk freely.

This book bothered me a lot. I get that they want to help animals and that they're horrified by the situation but they literally know nothing about animals and have no real wish to find out. It's all well and good you're horrified but maybe try some research to find out how you can help before diving right in. Sure it was harder then - 1998 (the publication date) the internet existed but it wasn't widespread all you youngsters, but there was still a place called the library that had books and magazines and videos to help guide you in unfamiliar subjects. And most people had encyclopedia's in their homes anyway.

Before you start feeding a random donkey maybe you should try doing some research to find out what they eat, what they like, what's bad for them, etc. It's like giving a dog chocolate - it's poisonous to them. Plus in 1998 it was still illegal to abuse an animal - the RSPCA was in existence - report the animal owner.

Okay - they do end up trying to report the owner and trying to hire a library book but it takes them so long to come to this conclusion and they'd already been feeding the donkey for weeks by this point - so kind of stupid.

But it's not the only stupid thing. Clara becauses absolutely moronic in this installment. She ignores curfew, skips school and lies to her mother about where she is at least half the time - including when she finds the owner of the donkey by approaching random strangers in a run down street and then accusing them of animal cruelty - yeah I couldn't imagine all the things that could go wrong doing that. I get that this is a tween books and tweens don't always make the best choices but I think there's a line to making bad choices and outright encouraging anarchy. Okay and that was my dramatic comment for the day. But still I think tweens are impressionable and giving them a book where doing everything that happens in this book and saying it's all alright because it's all for the animals seems stupid. It's asking for trouble.

I didn't much like Clara at all for most of this book but this scene takes the cake.

I yelled at him - "Mud! Stop that!" - but he's not used to me being mad at him and I guess he thought it was all part of the game because two minutes later he actually jumped right onto the table and trampled on my math book, scrunching all the pages and even tearing a big hole in one of them. I screamed and walloped him and he went scooting out into the hall with his ears pulled back. "You stupid dog!" I yelled.

Ure, Jean. Daffy Down Donkey (p. 61). Barron's Educational Series. Paperback Edition.

Is she for real? This is the dog you rescued that's been abused and you hit him. How can you go on and on about loving animals and being against animal cruelty and then proceed to hit a dog. She feels bad about it later but I was pretty over this book by that point. It was just ridiculous and outrageous and horrible. I finished it but I don't know if I really want to read the next one. 1 star.… (mais)

Reminiscent of Animal Ark, We Love Animals follows two tween girls, Clara and Jilly as they go about trying to make a difference for the animals they encounter. In the first installment, they find a man dumping a suitcase and are horrified to find it contains a dog! Clara wants to keep the dog, but her mum refuses to adopt a dog so big and instead takes the dog, they decide to call Mud (because no matter how often they bath him he always manages to find some mud to roll in), to the animal shelter. When the girls visit Mud they are inspired to continue to volunteer at the shelter - cleaning, grooming, playing, etc - whatever the shelter needs.

The two girls are kind of whiny throughout the book - but they are eleven - so it's kind of to be expected. I don't remember that particularly bothering me when I was an eleven year old reading this. Regardless of the whine, the dialogue is fast paced and suprisingly snarky. The dynamic between Clara and her mum was interesting - Clara does manipulate her but she also recognises that she's kind of difficult to live with and her mum is pretty understanding except when she loses it for her kid being difficult and even then she feels horribly guilty for saying mean things. For instance;

I told Mum that life was the pits and that I wished I'd never been born, and she said that she sometimes wished I'd never been born as well. And then she cried and said she didn't mean it, which actually I knew without her telling me, because my mum is ace and puts up with a lot.

Ure, Jean. Muddy Four Paws (p. 3). Hippo. Paperback Edition.

The dynamic would have to be more honest than usually seen in tween fiction. I can't think of the last time I read one that put that in print. It was amusing for me but probably traumatising for tweens. Although I can't remember it particularly bothering me when I first read it. So maybe not.

I liked the emphasis on volunteering and helping out - especially when they make an effort to be nice to Lucy and Caesar - two dogs that have been abused but don't have as nice a nature as Mud. I liked that it was also emphasised that you shouldn't just approach and pat dogs when you don't know their temperament - because it's not the dog's fault when they bite you but they are the ones that get blamed.

The friendship between Clara and Jilly was nice. And I liked the inclusion of Clara's younger brother Benjy - who has hearing difficulties and wears a hearing aid to compensate, uses sign language and has trouble speaking because he can't quite make the same sounds. I liked that it was generally just treated as normal rather than an issue. I found it the inclusion of Mud being deaf to be an interesting choice. I'm not really sure how they were going to train him or curb his excessive behaviour as is and it's not really explained either. I would've liked to see how that was going to be addressed.

Overall it's not a bad book with some funny moments. Probably not the best children's choice out there but it's a decent read for avid booklovers and animals alike. 3 stars.… (mais)