PLAGUE SORCERER (9+)
by Christopher Russell
Puffin, £4.99; 208pp

MUCH AS I LOVE MY children, I might not have bothered to have them had I discovered Cavalier King Charles Spaniels first. Sweeter, cheaper and much more appreciative, canines now rule my heart to the extent that even seeing the trailer for Eight Below, the new Disney film about an octet of abandoned huskies surviving the Antarctic, had me blubbing helplessly.

The British are well known to be soppy about dogs, but our literature has few good children’s books about man’s best friend. There is the ghastly Spot, and Dodie Smith’s classic The Hundred and One Dalmatians, but little in between. So a couple of new novels about dogs deserve a cheer.

Joshua Doder’s A Dog Called Grk featured a small dog who, aided by Tim, a lonely rich kid, saved the two kidnapped Raffifi children after the evil Colonel Zinfandel had brutally executed their parents. Although Tim, who finds that he can fly a helicopter after playing on-line computer games, was a delight, it was Grk who really won our hearts — my son reread the book three times. Grk and the Pelotti Gang is the sequel. This time Tim, Grk and the Raffifi children are in Brazil. After a £32 million robbery from the Bank of Brazil, Max and Natascha go to Rio to help to catch the Pelotti gang, which their brave diplomat father opposed. Timid Tim and little Grk promptly get lost in the slums, thanks to Grk’s canine curiosity about “interesting smells”, and Tim’s dreamy naivety.

Doder combines lightness of spirit with a sense of the dark things that adults to do each other. Just as the first Grk book was enriched by a heartfelt indignation at the evils of Eastern European dictatorship, so this is deepened by telling some of the horror of the Brazilian favelas (slums).

Like Anthony Horowitz’s recent Evil Star, a privileged English boy is the better for experiencing a bit of what life is like for the real underclass — not that his dog agrees. When Tim has to fight off the most deadly Pelotti brother in a raging river, Grk tips the balance by sinking his teeth into the bad guy, then grimly holds on to Tim as he is about to drown. Not since Tintin and Snowy has there been such a touching boy-dog partnership.

Postmen are not supposed to like dogs, but Christopher Russell, a former postie, wrote a good novel about Brind, a brain-damaged “dog-boy” in medieval England, who can communicate only with his master’s giant mastiffs. Like Henrietta Branford’s magnificent Fire, Bed & Bone, Brind and the Dogs of War combined history with thrilling doggy derring-do. In Plague Sorcerer, the Black Death has struck. It is a bad time to be different, and soon Brind, the mastiffs Glaive and Gabion, and the French girl Aurelie are fighting for their lives against accusations of sorcery.

The corruption caused by superstition and greed are well-dramatised — although much of what the pure-hearted Brind and the dogs instinctively choose is also very funny. The climax, when the two children are saved by “the finest pack of mastiffs in all of England” rallying to their outnumbered friends in “a deadly phalanx of muscle and teeth” makes you want to cheer. The heroic heart of dogs, large or small, is unfailing, and so is the pleasure of such tales.

WHAT'S MORE...

LITTLE YELLOW DOG SERIES (2+)
by Francesca Simon and James Lucas
Orion, £4.99 each

Charming series about a scamp.

DR XARGLE’S BOOKS OF EARTH HOUNDS (4+)
by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross
Andersen, £4.99

Alien misinformation about earthlings and dogs.

FIRE, BED & BONE (9+)
by Henrietta Branford
Walker, £4.99

The Peasant’s Revolt through a dog’s eyes. A masterpiece.

WHITE FANG (8+)
by Jack London
Penguin, £1.99

The real thing.

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