The box hummed and a white light came from the edges of it. Ranger couldn’t look at the light but when he finally opened his eyes, he was in a dusty, loud place with big animals, funny smells — and a woman’s frantic voice. Someone was lost, and Ranger heard a familiar word: “FIND!”
Authenticity tops the list of qualities in the new book “Stella by Starlight” by Sharon M. Draper.
Beginning with his earliest memory and moving forward to young adulthood, Jason Schmidt shares a powerful, emotional coming-of-age tale of an unstable childhood, of the beginning of AIDS and of people living on the edge of society with little to nothing, all told in a voice dripping with sarcasm, irony and anger.
Rags worked hard at keeping rats and mice away from the soldiers. He acted as an early-warning system for incoming shells; when he fell “belly-to-dirt,” so did the soldiers. He sniffed out wires and carried messages across enemy lines, which was very dangerous. Soon, everyone knew about Rags. He was “a giant of a dog.”
