Tomes of Miscellany: Jungle Dogs

Tomes of Miscellany

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This review does not represent the opinions of the general public. It reflects my personal thoughts and opinions on the book.

That said, on to the review!

Title: Jungle Dogs
Author: Graham Salisbury
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books
Format: Paperback
Copyright Date: 1998

For James Kahekilimaikalani "Boy" Regis, growing up on the windward side of O'ahu isn't very easy. Sure, his parents love him and he enjoys much of the same things that other sixth-graders do. But life has its ups and downs, and right now his relationship with his brother, Damon, is at a low point. For as long as he can remember he and Damon have been close. Now, though, his ninth-grader brother has changed, forming up a gang--the Cudas--and hanging out with them all the time, doing reckless and careless and sometimes illegal things that a younger Damon would never have done before. And now Damon's begun belittling his younger brother, stepping into the middle of Boy's battles and fighting them for him without being asked. And while having an older brother protecting you might be good, it loses its value when the same older brother calls you a sissy. Now, disillusioned and distracted, Boy must learn to cope with his fears and wishes on his own. Because if he doesn't, there's no telling where it will eventually take him: swimming with sharks, into the jungle where the wild dogs roam, or to the hospital or the morgue--because Damon's intervention into one of Boy's problems has set him at odds with a twelfth-grader who isn't afraid of violence! Will Boy ever be able to pull his life back together? Will he ever prove to Damon and himself that he can handle his own problems? And will he ever conquer his fear of the jungle dogs?

Jungle Dogs isn't you run-of-the-mill stories about growing up. Then again, maybe it is, only in a different location. However, perhaps it's the location that makes all the difference. After all, where else are you going to find a boy struggling to forge his own path through a world of gang rivalries, drunk and disconnected sailors, aging paddlers on the sea, and a setting filled with tropical elements and the feral nature of the wild beasts? Okay, maybe you could get that in a story set in Florida or California. Give me a break, would you?

Seriously, though, this book takes an interesting path to bring Boy to his epiphany. Believe it or not, it is through an English assignment! Asked to identify his hero and why that person is such isn't the easiest thing in the world to do, not when your hero has begun treating you like something lower than dirt. Still, Boy's experiences remind me of my own elementary school years (no, I didn't see any packs of wild dogs) and the assignments we had to do, like the obligatory "what I did this summer" essays. It's through the writing assignment and the various people Boy meets that gives him fodder for not just the essay but also a story that gets him in good with the teacher. Not to mention how effective both are in helping him learn more about himself. How's that for a good thing?

Jungle Dogs may be a book better suited to younger readers than older, but it is still an interesting piece of work. Remember Under the Blood-Red Sun? Same author, with verifiable ties to Hawai'i, so you can be certain that the book is as real as a piece of fiction can be. So why not give it a try? Who knows, you might like it!

Rating: Thumbs up! A not-quite-coming-of-age story with a bunch of social and psychological problems to deal with!

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