Soldier Dogs 2 – Attack on Pearl Harbor

Soldier Dogs 2 - Attack on Pearl Harbor by Marcus Sutter is a war story for 9 year olds about a boy, a stray dog and the morning of 7 December 1941.

What happens

Joe Dean is eleven. His dad is head cook on the USS West Virginia, the family has moved from Texas to Oahu, his baby sister Kathy has just arrived and there isn't much spare money.

Which is the problem, because a dog has started following him home from the docks. Always a block behind, every time he looks round.

Joe knows he can't keep her. He sneaks her chicken off his own plate anyway.

The book opens with the attack and then jumps back a day, so you read that whole last ordinary evening knowing exactly what is coming. It's an uncomfortable trick and it works.

Some chapters are told from the dog's side, which sounds like a gimmick and isn't. Skipper smells anger before she sees it. She waits in the shadows. She knows where Joe is by sound through two walls.

There's something else here that's handled plainly and well. Joe's family is Black, and two young white sailors on the street tease him and flick peanut shells into his bike basket. His dad has taught him what to do about it. Be polite. Don't give them what they want, because then they win. You can feel exactly what that costs him.

Now the caution, and it's a real one. The prologue puts you on deck as the bombs fall. The USS Arizona is cut in half in front of Joe and sinks in ten minutes, and the book tells you plainly that it took over a thousand American lives down with it. There's machine-gun fire, oily black smoke and a wall of hot air that throws an eleven-year-old onto his back. This was a real day and real people died on it. If your child finds frightening things hard to shake off afterwards, this one arrives in the first three pages and doesn't soften.

For a reader who already likes history and wants it given straight, that honesty is the whole reason to hand it over. Joe is good company, his family is warm, and the dog is the best thing in the book.

What to read next

If they want another dog who ended up at the front, Hero Pup of World War I tells Stubby's story in his own voice. He was a stray on the streets of New Haven before the army got hold of him, and he was a real dog.