Jenny Nimmo’s ‘The Dog Star’ – A Big Hit with 2nd Class Room 6

From ‘The Daily Reader’ newspaper:

“It was confirmed today that of all the Jenny Nimmo books that 2nd Class Room 6 have read that ‘The Dog Star’ is their very favourite. A poll was held in class and these were the results. ‘The Owl Tree’ and ‘Tom and the Pterosaur’ both got one vote each. ‘The Stone Mouse’ received six. But ‘The Dog Star’ was the runaway success with twenty two votes.

Some people felt that perhaps the last book read by the class is always going to do best because it is more recent and clearer in their minds, but supporters of ‘The Dog Star’ said, that though they enjoyed all the Jenny Nimmo books we have read so far, ‘The Dog Star’ was simply the best.

Later in the year, 2nd Class Room 6 are going to read ‘The Snow Spider’ by Jenny Nimmo. This is a challenging read and it will be interesting to see, if ‘The Dog Star’ will be knocked off top position”.

 

So why was ‘The Dog Star’ so popular?

 

We agreed that it was about something

a lot of children dream about:

a dog of their own.

 

But the story is not that straight forward.

There are a lot of difficulties

in the story for Marty

who is the main character.

 

Her older sister Clare puts her in a very difficult

situation and she doesn’t know whether to

make her sister happy by being mean to

Miss Theresa Tree or make her Dad happy

by being friendly to her.

 

We found the story

serious,

mysterious

and magical.

We prefer serious books.

For example we preferred the serious

‘Owl Tree’ by Jenny Nimmo

to the ‘Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’

by Jill Tomlinson, even though it made us laugh.

 

We ‘made the connection’ between the eight and a half years,

that it takes the light from the Dog Star to reach earth,

and the fact that Marty is eight and a half years old

and that Marty’s Mum went home to God

eight and a half years ago.

 

Having already read ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’

we knew about Orion and his belt,

and what the Dog Star was, didn’t need to be explained to us.

 

Even at the end of the book,

we were left wondering about

‘The Dog Star’.

 

What was it really?

Where did it come from?

 

We would give this book ten out of ten

and would recommend it to children

between the ages seven and nine.

 

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4 thoughts on “Jenny Nimmo’s ‘The Dog Star’ – A Big Hit with 2nd Class Room 6

  1. Merrybeau,
    I really enjoyed reading this review, and loved the graph at the beginning! I got the feeling that your students love to read which is wonderful! The analysis of why the last book might have fared best in your poll was also very interesting as well. As a secondary Earth Sciences teacher i was thrilled to hear that all the students knew who orion was! I also thought it was fascinating that the light from the star in the book took eight and a half years to reach Earth. I’m looking forward to reading more about the books in your class.
    Jasper fox Sr.
    8th Grade earth Sciences Teacher
    New York USA

  2. Hello to you,

    Thank you very much for reading our book review.

    It was fun to do the graphs.
    You are right we love to read and we also love data in maths.

    The other thing we love to do is sing!

    We were lucky to learn about Orion and then to meet him in another book.
    We like making connections like that and we are good at it.

    We are going to read Anne Fine’s ‘The Angel of Nitshill Road’ next
    Teacher thinks we might see a connection between it and ‘The Dog Star’.

    We will keep posting about what we read
    and we really appreciated your kind comment.

    2nd Class, Room 6

  3. Hi Teacher, I hope you get well soon and I REALLY REALLY liked, The Dog Star very much. Ok bye for now 🙂

  4. Hi Amy, Thank you for your kind comment. It made me feel MUCH better 🙂 Have a great weekend and I will see you on Monday.

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