Dogboy

Australian author Kelleher's story of a boy raised by dogs moves from the wild to the highs of high society and back, saying much about humans and their values. Residents of a drought-stricken village find an abandoned infant suckling a mother dog and view him as an abomination. A girl named Magda, however, shows the baby warmth, and the boy grows up in the shadow of the village. By age five, he has learned how to build a fire, skin rabbits and weave blankets. The dogboy, as the villagers refer to him, is taken in by a trader as an apprentice, then beaten and abandoned. But when word arrives of a traveling shaman with the ability to make rain, the dogboy-now Boy, with a growing command of the English language-becomes determined to follow him home in order to learn his skills. He discovers he has a natural ability to divine water, which he parlays into a life of wealth and luxury, and with it a seclusion and sadness that he had not expected. Kelleher's lyrical prose remains remarkably calm for such a tumultuous story. His message may not be new-human beings can be the real savages, putting the worst of the animal kingdom to shame-but he delivers it in effortlessly elegant fashion. Ages 12-up.