Dingo

by Charles de Lint

The day that Lainey and her large dog come into Miguel's dad's comic and music shop, his life is changed forever. She has wild red hair, beautiful brown eyes, and she and Miguel click almost immediately. The trouble is that she doesn't seem like the same person the next time he meets her, and Miguel starts having really crazy, frightening dreams. Lainey has this strange connection to her dog, Em, which she says is a dingo, a wild dog from Australia, her home country. When Johnny Ward, the town bad boy, tells Miguel about the dreams he has been having and that he really likes Em, whose dog's name is Lainey, Miguel knows he has entered the Twilight Zone. At a nighttime meeting on the beach, Lainey tells Miguel that she has a twin sister, and that they are shape-changers. Soon Miguel and Johnny are thrown into a perilous venture to save the girls from their biological father, and Dingo, the leader of their clan. Dingo is similar to the last book I read, Impossible, where a fatastical, magical reality parallels a normal, modern one. And again, the power of love is a central theme. Dingo is another title on this year's Tayshas list, available in the LHS library. --reviewed by Dail Sams