Reviews

Hurry Home, Candy by Meindert DeJong, Maurice Sendak

roseleaf24's review against another edition

2.0

Looking at other reviews, it is such a clear reminder that there are so many books because there are so many different readers, and not every book is for every reader. Ugh. I read this because it was a Newbery Honor book. I usually do enjoy DeJong's books. I do not like dog books. This one is from the perspective of the dog, starting as a puppy. The villain of the story is the mother who doesn't want a dog, but whose children save up for a puppy. It's 1953 and she doesn't drive, so she's stuck at home with this puppy all day while her children are at school and her husband is at work with the car. The puppy ends up with a terrible fear of brooms, and when he gets lost in the country in a storm, this fear of brooms keeps him continually separated from humans who are trying to help. It ends happily, but not without some bank robbers.

karisommers's review against another edition

4.0

I remember reading this book as a kid, and for some reason, it popped into my head one day while I was looking up books about dogs for someone. Behold, the library owned a copy! So, I read it again, and it was almost as good as I remembered (a rare thing indeed).

tealmango's review against another edition

3.0

I liked this book much better than I liked Shadrach (another Meindert Dejong book I've read). There were children in this story, yes, but they didn’t figure so prominently in it. The plot centers around a small dog named Candy and his life, from puppyhood with the children and the mother who abused him with a broom (which I thought was slightly traumatizing, especially for a kids book), to his life as a stray in the woods, to his discovery of a man who became his companion. The story is told mostly from the viewpoint of the dog, and although I’m not a dog person, I feel Dejong really got inside the brain of a puppy who is lost and forced to fend for himself. The pain, the fear, the instinctual actions all felt real to me. Still, although I did like this book more than the previous Dejong book, it still wasn’t my favorite.

*Read more on my blog: http://newberyandbeyond.com/newbery-reviews-shadrach-and-hurry-home-candy/

triscuit807's review

5.0

5 stars. It's rare that books written for children delve into horrors of animal neglect/abuse; "Black Beauty" comes to mind, but then again children weren't intended to be the original audience - it was an animal welfare book for adults. DeJong understands dogs as well as Sewell understood horses and his book was intended for kids. There's a lot to take away. In "Hurry Home, Candy" the children are fickle and somewhat unthinking. They want a puppy, buy a puppy too young to be taken from its mother, and can't be convinced to return it for a few weeks. The puppy lives for the couple hours each day it can be with the children, and learns to fear the mother with her broom and fear/respect the father with his hard hands. The puppy is named Candy and is lost by a bridge when a car ride is ruined by a flat tire and a thunderstorm. For a year, Candy lives the wretched life of a stray and unlearns trust (which was shaky to begin with). He slinks from bush to bush in search of food completely friendless. Then just barely escaping an attack by a pack of dogs, he encounters kindness for the first time when a farm woman feeds him and takes him into her horse-drawn cart. All goes awry when the cart has an accident spilling them into a ditch. The woman goes to the hospital, and Candy who has stayed with her purse goes to the pound. The pound is a complete horror except for the kindness of the attendant, George. And that's only about half the book. There's much more as Candy re-learns hope and love. For me, the most remarkable thing about this book is that it was intended for children. It is not an easy/gentle read and I have to wonder if that's what kept it from being the Newbery Award winner. The second most remarkable thing is how the author conveys the feelings of this stray dog's life. I read this (via Open Library/Internet Archive due to Covid 19) for my 2020 Reading Challenge (Popsugar 2020 "favorite prompt-animal story") and my Newbery Challenge (Honor 1954). I read this via Open Library/Internet Archive due to library closures amid the Covid 19 pandemic.