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Summary
Summary
It's great having a best friend to do everything with-but not so great when they go away. Trixie the golden retriever longs for her buddy Jinx the dachshund when Jinx goes on vacation. Lonely Trixie tries to find new friends, but discovers that spiders have no sense of humor and mice just can't appreciate a good tail-chase. No one can compare to Jinx!
Kids young and old will relate to bestselling author Dean Koontz's funny story extolling all the wonderful things about best friends.
Author Notes
Dean Koontz was born on July 9, 1945 in Everett, Pennsylvania. He received a degree in education from Shippensburg State College in 1967. A former high school English teacher as well as a teacher-counselor with the Appalachian Poverty Program, he began writing as a child to escape an ugly home life caused by his alcoholic father. A prolific writer at a young age, he had sold a dozen novels by the age of 25. Early in his career, he wrote under numerous pen names including David Axton, Brian Coffey, K. R. Dwyer, Leigh Nichols, Richard Paige, and Owen West. He is best known for the books written under his own name, many of which are bestsellers, including Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, The Husband, Odd Hours, 77 Shadow Street, Innocence, The City, Saint Odd, and The Silent Corner.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 1-Koontz follows up I, Trixie Who Is Dog (Putnam, 2009) with an equally unimpressive sequel unlikely to appeal to anyone but die-hard fans. The fun-loving canine is upset because her best friend, Jinx, is going on vacation. Who will she play with? None of the neighborhood animals are good friends for a dog, so finally she invents an imaginary one. Then Jinx comes home, and Koontz slams readers over the head with the importance of friendship. Cleland's watercolor and pen-and-ink illustrations are appealing enough, if overly cute. She mixes full-bleed spreads and single pages with spot art to add interest and movement. Trixie almost always looks as if she is having fun, and the jagged edges and splashy watercolor washes match her frenetic energy and slapdash personality. The writing, however, leaves much to be desired. The story meanders, and the text, which hardly ever scans, mixes supposedly doglike poor grammar with proper usage and forces in meaningless words for rhymes, despite the fact that the rhyme scheme is unreliable at best, and completely disappears in places. While small children will sympathize with the best-friend-on-vacation scenario, the didactic ending is beyond doggerel. On the whole, an entirely disappointing offering.-Amy Lilien-Harper, The Ferguson Library, Stamford, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Dog Trixie pines for her best dog friend, Jinx, who is on vacation. The rhythmically challenged rhymes seem to come and go as they please, and they don't always make sense. (On non-dogs' shortcomings: "Bees are too stingy. / Snakes are too thingy.") Cleland's energetic illustrations can't save this from being a superficial exercise. (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Trixie returns in a second picture-book outing (I, Trixie, Who Is Dog, 2009) that proves to be only slightly less problematic than its predecessor. Jinx the wiener dog is Trixie's best friend. They do everything together, from playing video games to quiet indoor reading. When Jinx leaves for a week of vacation with his family, Trixie is distraught. She mopes, attempts to befriend the local wildlife, then at last sees Jinx return. The moral of the story is that "a friend is more precious than pirate gold." Koontz spells out his morals, preferring to tell rather than show. The entire point of this particular book appears to be that when friends leave you miss them. Mangled rhyme schemes appear throughout the text (for example, pairing "discuss literature" with "Share an clair") even as Cleland's watercolors charm. She is clearly the star of the show here, but even her talents can't save this distinctly mundane bit of storytelling. For fans of Koontz's other Trixie books, regardless of quality. (Picture book. 4-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.