"How to steal a dog"

Title: How to steal a dog
Author: Barbara O'connor Publisher: Square fish
Place&Year of Publication: New York, year of 2007
Number of pages: 170 W
here you found the book: School library

Story Review:

   Georgina is desperate to find a house. Georgina and her family live in a car ever since her father had left her family and they got evicted from their apartment. Her mom works at two different places to earn as much as money so her and her family can get a place to live in and Georgina is stuck looking after her little brother, Toby for after school. Even though Georgina’s mom works at two different places, they still can’t afford enough money to move to a house. Georgina wants to help her mom to get some money, but she can’t get it from anywhere and one day Georgina sees a missing dog poster that says reward of $500 dollars. With the $500 dollars, her and her family will have enough money to move to a house, but of course, she thinks that she won’t be able to find the missing dog, but she thinks that if she “steals” a dog from one of her rich neighborhood and waits until the owner puts a reward sign poster for his or her “missing” dog, and this is why the title is called “How to steal a dog”. She plans everything and how she will steal the dog and finally, Georgina finds the perfect dog, Willy, with his rich and friendly owner. She waits for the reward poster to come up, but the owner doesn’t put the poster up, so she goes to the owner’s house and pretending that she doesn’t know anything about the missing dog, and she figures out that the owner isn’t rich. The owner, Carmella is a very nice person, but only if she has $500 dollars, Georgina would take Willy to her house. Georgina’s mom is so close of getting a house, but Georgina can’t wait any longer and everything seem to be so slow and not working. Finally, Carmella’s uncle says that he is able to lend some money to Carmella. And there is only one more step for Georgina, it is either taking Willy to Carmella’s and receive the money, or tell everything truth to Carmella. Georgina thinks that this is all wrong, so she tells everything to Carmella what had happened. After telling the truth, she waits for Carmella to hate her, but she doesn’t. She is disappointed in Georgina, but she decides to forgive her. After two days later, her mom tells Georgina and Toby that she earned enough money to move to a house! They are no longer living in the car now. The house isn’t very big, but Georgina loves it and she decides and promises that she will never ever steal a dog again!

Christian perspective:

        This book is not written in a Christian perspective, but in the end Georgina deals her problem well. Even though she steals the dog, which isn’t the right thing, in the end she tells the truth to Carmella. Even if we do something wrong, we shouldn’t be afraid to do the right thing, or to tell the truth. When Georgina tells Carmella the truth, Carmella forgives her, and that’s like between us and God. If we ask God for forgiveness, He will always forgive us and in the end, good things will come. We as Christians, we shouldn’t rely on money or worldly things, but we should rely on God. Even if we don’t have something that we need, or want, we can always ask God and He will answer our prayers!

My thoughts:

    I choose this book, because the title was interesting and the story sounded engaging. I enjoyed this book, because it engaged me to the next chapters and I like realistic fictions. It felt like I was there in the book, and it made me want to help her and her family with their problems. It made me realized that there are so many homeless people in the world, and we should be thankful for what we have and not complain. I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn’t usually enjoy reading, because it has shorter amount of pages and the author writes it easy to read and understand.