In children’s books we aren’t surprised when animals take center stage, or when they speak. We find that unusual, or “odd” in adult literature (the major exception seems to be fantasy where there are a *lot* of talkative dragons, but that’s another post). And even in kidlit, in a realistic story, the animals have agency and a voice only figuratively.
We don’t need animals to talk to tell us their side of the story (although I like it when they do.) We know what dogs are feeling without any verbal explanations, and they seem to know our feelings too.
Next up in my middle-grade adventures is a story about a girl on the autism spectrum who finds companionship with a stray dog. Rain Reign by Ann Martin takes some pretty big risks. The biggest risk is having an autistic child as the viewpoint character. While that helps us feel her concerns and worldview with great intimacy, Rose’s repetitive interests (homonyms!) and constant repetition of the same questions and thoughts risks having the reader react just as Rose’s father or the other teasing kids do – with annoyance or impatience. I love words, but even I was daunted by intro pages that launched into an explanation of the difference between homonyms and homophones as my entree into this world. Maybe my attention span has been eaten by the Internet, but this felt like an uphill climb for the first pages of a book aimed at 8-12 year-olds.
I enjoyed the book, but because I react differently than an autistic individual would, it was all too easy for my reactions to diverge from Rose’s. I was baffled by her constant nagging of her father who clearly had a hair trigger temper and was dangerously close to being violent. It felt so wrong to me that a child wouldn’t read that. Of course that is “showing” that Rose can’t read feelings, but again, I felt distanced from her.
What was absolutely great? Descriptions of her relationship with the dog she’s named Rain, and the physical descriptions of Rain’s affection for her. When Rain is lost during a hurricane (Rose suspects her father let the dog out deliberately so she’d run away) there is a Quest to locate her again, and Rose does find her dog. I won’t spoil the plot by revealing more, but by the end of the book Rose chooses to sacrifice her love for Rain to follow the “rules” and I felt unsatisfied by the ending. Losing both her parents, and the dog she loved, we don’t know whether Rose’s future will be better or worse.
This book reminded me strongly of another book that deals with autism and moral choices about animals, How to Speak Dolphin. Again we have a less than sympathetic father, and an autistic child dependent on a relationship with a captive dolphin to be able to interact with the world. There are major differences, though, including the fact that in Dolphin,we see the world through a sibling’s eyes, and the moral choice is whether to privilege the needs of that autistic child over the rights of a captive dolphin. I think that makes that a good candidate for my next middle-grade adventure!