Dogchild

by Kevin Brooks

Overview

A boy raised by wild dogs fights for survival in this gripping post apocalyptic tale by an acclaimed Carnegie Medalist.

Jeet is a dogchild, raised by the wild dogs who killed his parents, then recaptured and “rehumanized.” He now lives with one of only two remaining human communities in the world, besieged by the much larger enemy clan. In a wasteland shaped by war, starvation, and haunting violence, Jeet grapples with his identity — he misses his wild family, and the people of his clan see dogchilds as less than human. When the human clans begin to prepare for a final, bloody battle against each other, Jeet is at the center. His struggle and his relationship with another rehumanized dogchild shed light on what it means to be human or inhuman — and what it takes to be a survivor. In his most ambitious novel yet, Carnegie Medalist Kevin Brooks offers a breathless work of speculative fiction that will have readers at the edge of their seat.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536214154
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	06/16/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	7 MB
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Kevin Brooks is the critically acclaimed author of many books for young people, including Born Scared and The Bunker Diary, which received the Carnegie Medal. He lives in England.

Date of Birth:

March 30, 1959

Place of Birth:

Exeter, Devon, England

Education:

B.A. in Cultural Studies, Aston University, 1983

Editorial Reviews

It’s a dog-eat-dog—and at times human-eat-human—world in Brooks’ stark postapocalyptic novel...The plot hinges on an impending, full-scale attack on the Dau, which Brooks expertly draws out to agonizing tautness. Whether read simply as a survival story or as an exploration of humanity, this ruthless book is both bark and bite.
—Booklist (starred review)

Brooks has created unique characters that convincingly bridge the gap between human and animal thought processes...The unusual figures, the harrowing scenario, and the taut, relentless action sequences combine to produce a story—told without apostrophes, quotation marks, or traditional chapter breaks—that readers will find difficult to put down.
—Publishers Weekly

Grim but ultimately gripping, it’s a compelling post-apocalyptic tale for readers ready to grapple with nihilism and the darker side of what it means to be human.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

From the Publisher

2020-03-11
The Call of the Wild meets Mad Max in this blood-soaked, nihilistic thriller.

Brooks’ latest follows a traumatized protagonist struggling to find the right words amid copious casualty and senseless causality. The apocalypse has come and gone; the surviving world consists of two enclaves—that of the enemy Dau and the town, a walled, seaside citadel—and a no man’s land populated by wild dogs. Born to teenage parents on a wagon trail, captured and raised by a dog pack, and rehumanized by his uncle, first-person narrator Jeet has always struggled to resolve his dogchild double consciousness: His is a canine soul in a human body. Gun Sur, the town’s authoritarian Marshal, charges Jeet with recording the entirety of known history prior to a pending battle. When Chola Se, another dogchild, is abducted, delivered to the Dau, and brutalized by Pilgrim (Gun Sur’s second-in-command) upon her return, the dogchildren must untangle the Gordian knot of her ordeal, sorting out multiple murders, double- and triple-crossings, and the inconceivable contours of the looming showdown. Racial signifiers are limited to skin tone; Jeet has brown skin, and many character names evoke a South Asian feel. Jeet’s unconventional prose, lacking quotation marks, eschewing apostrophes, and employing novel compound words such as “Ime” and “weare,” eventually wears smooth. Chola Se’s gang rapes followed by a questionable consensual sex scene feel like a plot device for inflating the stakes, troubling an otherwise egalitarian tale.

Uncompromisingly brutal and black hole–dense; howls to a niche audience. (Survival thriller. 15-18)

Kirkus Reviews