The One and Only Bob (Katherine Applegate)

The One and Only Bob
The One and Only series, Book 2
Katherine Applegate
Harper
Fiction, CH Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Everyone calls dogs "man's best friend", but Bob the mutt knows that the feeling is far from mutual. Would a "best friend" tear him and his littermates from their mother when they were just a few weeks old? Would a "best friend" then throw the helpless puppies from the window of a moving truck, to land in a ditch (if they were lucky) and fend for themselves - leaving just one determined survivor? Even when Bob found his way to the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and the enclosure of Ivan the gorilla, he knew better than to trust people; just look at what they did to Ivan's elephant friend Stella, the baby elephant Ruby, and Ivan himself.
That was a year ago. Now, Ivan and Ruby have better lives in a local zoo and Bob lives with the girl Julia and her family. Still, much as he loves the ear scratches and the soft bed and the regular meals, he tries his best to keep his stray mutt edge, resisting all efforts at training. After all, he knows just how little a human's love really means.
When a hurricane sweeps through, Bob and his friends are thrown into chaos... and, unexpectedly, Bob hears a bark he hasn't heard since his puppy days: the voice of his sister Boss, whom he hasn't seen since they were tossed out the window of a truck. Maybe he wasn't the only one to survive, after all - but what can one little mutt hope to do in the middle of a disaster?

REVIEW: I enjoyed Applegate's fictionalization of the real-life Ivan's tale in The One and Only Ivan, but didn't think it needed a sequel. Where do you go from that ending, anyway? But Bob does, indeed, have his own story that's worth telling... and, in Applegate's typical fashion, she manages to manipulate simple prose into sucker-punches to the feelings at will.
Bob was always the hardscrabble mutt with the heart of gold, building a jaded wall around his feelings and a heart that had been broken too many times in the past. He openly scoffs at dogs who grovel to humans, even humans who treat them terribly. Clearly the species is untrustworthy. Just look at what they're doing with the planet, and why Ruby and Ivan and the other zoo animals will never be safe in the shrinking patches of wilderness left to their kind. But he can't help but feel warm toward Julia and her family; they did help rescue Ivan and his friends from their horrible days in the Big Top Mall, after all, so they're not bad, but be darned if he'll ever be one of those sad sack pooches treating humans like gods on Earth. Lately, though, he's been having bad dreams, dreams where he loses everyone - and where, somewhere in the distance, his sister Boss is also lost and alone. Then the storm hits, tearing his world apart, scattering the zoo animals (some do not make it; Applegate has never pretended death is never an option, not in any of her books), and giving Bob a painful sliver of hope when he hears a very familiar voice from the nearby animal shelter. But the waters are still rising, the winds still blowing, and the danger is far from past. Bob the streetwise mutt, who has only ever looked out for "numero uno", must decide whether he's willing to risk everything for a chance to save the ones he loves - even if those chances are slim, bordering on none.
If one wants to be overly-critical, Bob does feel a little "human" in his head, but so did Ivan, and it didn't hurt his story (or soften the emotional blows or payoffs). That's about all I can think of against it. For a children's book, Bob faces very real peril and possibility of failure, and not everyone can (or wants to) be "saved" when Mother Nature gets angry. If this is any indication of the storytelling level, then I expect I'll be reading the rest of the series at some point.

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