Capture Strider (Leigh Botts, #2) Fabricated By Beverly Cleary PDF

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I was a huge Beverly Cleary fanyears ago when I was a kid and read all her books, Carolyn Haywood and Frances Lattimore before her, and Judy Bloom afterwards.
I decided to revisit a great deal of books that I loved betweenand started by taking out an armful of Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary books, this being one of them.


I was disappointed to see when I looked for the copyright date it was, so clearly not one I read as a kid, as I wasin, but it was definitely worth reading and I am glad I've decided to go back in time for a bit to enjoy for a second time things that gave me pleasure all those decades ago now when I was a new reader.
During a few year stretch of my adolescence, there was a time when I kept a lot of penpals, Before the internet and emails arrival with the touch of a button, I loved the thrill of seeing mail addressed to me from all parts of the globe.
I had penpals from as far as Australia and as close as Michigan, and each piece of mail was no less thrilling than the last.
It is little wonder that one of my favorite books during that time was Dear Mr Henshaw by Beverly Cleary.
I read it so many times that I knew the key points in the plot by heart, I did not know that the estimable Cleary had written a sequel after I had advanced to the teen and adult sections of my library.
To my thrill, I found Strider on my parents bookshelf a few years ago yet never got around to reading it.
Needing either an author or character whose name starts with the letter B for a scrabble challenge, I thought this was as good a time as any to read one of my childhood favorite authors.


Three years have elapsed since Leigh Botts and his mother moved to their cottage by the beach in Pacific Grove, California.
No longer the new kid, Leigh is about to enter high school and hopes to make a good impression on the rest of the school.
His father still drives a long distance truck and calls from time to time, and his mother still works the afternoon shift at the local hospital while studying to be a registered nurse.
Told by his mother to clean out his room one summer morning, Leigh unearths the diary he kept during sixth grade and decides to write in it again.
During the eighties and nineties when gender roles in society were much more defined than they are now, in hindsight I see how cutting edge Cleary was in having a male teenaged protagonist keep a diary, a hobby usually associated with girls.
Leigh needed an outlet because he still only had one friend Barry and he spent long hours alone in his cottage.
Writing would keep him from loitering on the beach and watching too much television, keeping him in his mothers good graces.


Leighs loneliness takes a turn for the better when he and Barry discover an abandoned dog on the beach one day.
Leigh still misses his dog Bandit that his dad took with him when his parents got divorced three years earlier.
Leigh and Barry, whose parents are also divorced, make a lighthearted jab at divorce as they agree to joint custody of this dog who they name Strider.
Surprisingly, Leighs mother agrees to this arrangement because she knows that he could use a companion on his long nights alone in the cottage.
He has always been a good kid mopping floors, doing his share of the laundry on their trips to the laundromat, and maintaining good grades in school.
An Australian shepherd dog, Strider ended up being a blessing for Leigh who no longer had to spend all of his time on his own.
Even though he is growing into a young man at age fourteen, Leigh is still in need of his parents, neither of whom is around that much.
A dog and writing his thoughts down in a diary would have to suffice, Strider ends up being the loyalest of dogs and a blessing in Leighs life, and, important to this animal lover, nothing happens to him other than being loved by Leigh, Barry, and their families.
Strider picked two quality families to be adopted by indeed,

Beverly Cleary made a career writing about kids with real issues without going over the top, just writing about the everyday occurrences in their lives.
Fans had been clamoring for a sequel to Dear Mr Henshaw so she obliged, yet, in high school, Leigh is a little older than her averaged age protagonist.
Here, she helps children of divorce navigate through difficult times by writing of how Leigh, Barry, and their new friend Kevin cope with their parents splitting in unique ways.
At fourteen, Leigh is just beginning to experience teenaged angst and conflict, chuckling about his English teacher behind her back, dealing with a brief falling out with Barry, and falling for Geneva Weston, a girl with monarch butterfly hair.
They join the track team and integrate into their high school community, all the while Leigh maintaining the qualities that have adults saying he is a good kid.
Now having a dog, Leighs life appears stable and “normal” as he begins the path through his teenaged years toward adulthood.
He is the type of young man that his parents do not have to worry about and is the protagonist of a story that parents feel comfortable having their kids read, hopefully influencing them for the better.


In this era where most young adult books involve teen romance or supernatural elements, I find it difficult to choose quality books for my advanced reading fourth grade daughter.
Although below her current reading level, Strider is the type of book I read at her age that I keep looking for in current library stacks, a book about an everyday kid whose issues are not dramatized.
Leigh Botts is the type of wholesome character that authors today should focus on rather than making every teenaged friendship into romance and divorce into the end of the world.
Rather than sinking into depression, Leigh keeps a diary and becomes a friend to a loyal dog, The world needs more authors like Beverly Cleary, who help kids navigate through real world issues by minimizing conflict, I am glad that is discovered this gem of hers on my bookshelf,

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I homeschool my kids and we like to listen to books on cd in the car, we have aminute drive to just about anywhere we go We recently listened to Dear Mr, Henshaw on cd. I thought I had read it growing up, but the story was not familiar to me, I really enjoyed listening to it and so did my kids, I was thrilled to hear that there was a sequel,

I was even more thrilled to learn that our small local library had it on cd as well.
My husband doesn't care to read, but has been recently laid off, I got the book on cd and wasn't sure when we would listen to it, My husband said to go ahead and put it in the car cd player, He enjoyed it just as much as I did, Now he wants to get more books on cd to listen to in the car, We especially loved the voice of the narrator George Guidall, He was very pleasant to listen to and made the characters come to life,

I really like the style of the book, in diary form, The characters have fun distinctive personalities, It's a book that children and adults can relate to and enjoy,reads,. Stop everything! BEVERLY CLEARY HAS DIED! Like millions of others, Cleary is one of the authors I used to regularly read back in my childhood in thes and I've been meaning to do a middleaged reassessment of her work, much like sitelinkI did with Judy Blume in, so her unfortunate passing seemed as good a day as any to jump on the Chicago Public Library website and check out eight of her ebooks before everyone else could come around to the idea of doing so themselves.


Today's book is from the end of Cleary's career, published inwhen she wasyears old, and there's no other choice but to admit that her age is quite clearly showing here, the work of a deeply elderly woman who at that point had not only grownup children but now grownup grandchildren, withbooks now under her belt and for very understandable reasons was simply running out of steam as a creative writer.
It's not so much that this book is bad it's yet another chapterbook for tweens about the genteel adventures of a kid slightly older than them, which like we examined in Ramona and Her Mother is the product of Cleary's latecareer turn into "social realism YA," inspired by peers like Judy Blume and Betsy Byars, making this

as much about the anxiety and loneliness issues of our hero Leigh Botts he of the previous book I most recently reviewed,'s Dear Mr.
Henshaw as it is about the random dog he comes across at the beach one day and eventually adopts, the same plot as Cleary's very first Strider's Henry Huggins, also reviewed as part of this series but now with a darker and more melancholic tone.


No, the problem is that, just like anything that was once daring but then was coopted by everyone else once it became popular, child audiences were growing weary by the 's with these kinds of "Cassavetes for Kids" stories and I don't think it's any coincidence at all that a mere six years separates this book from the publication of the first "Harry Potter" volume, a new changing of the guard just as necessary and paradigmchanging as Cleary's own changing of the guard back in the years after World War Two, in her case from the weepy wishfulfillment Dickensian Victorian tales that were the norm for children's literature at the time.
That doesn't make Strider an objectively bad book in hindsight, but certainly it was a story type that had been played out by the time it was published and after its disappointing results both commercially and critically, the world would have to wait an entire additional decade and a half before the ascendancy of Cleary and Blume's spiritual inheritor, John Green of The Fault in Our Stars fame.
This should all be kept in mind before approaching it yourself, an interesting book from a historical perspective but definitely not the one to start with if approaching Cleary for the first time.



TheBeverly Cleary Memorial ReRead:
sitelink Henry Huggins
sitelink Henry and Beezus
sitelink Otis Spofford
sitelink Henry and Ribsy
sitelink Fifteen
sitelink Henry and the Paper Route
sitelink Henry and the Clubhouse
sitelink Ribsy
sitelink Ramona and Her Mother
sitelink Dear Mr.
Henshaw
sitelink Ramona Forever
sitelink StriderIn the introduction of Henry Huggins Beverly Cleary wrote that she wanted to write a book for school boys about boys, books about kids who are bored and try to find something to do.

She underestimated her prose, I am not a boy, turningsoon, and her books make me so happy, I envy these boys who would go to library and find Cleary as their librarian,
I just want to find her, give a big hug, look into her eyes and try to find Ramona trapped in the body of this dearest old lady.
Not as endearing as Dear Mr, Henshaw, but a decent read, Another book that gave some insight into how a teen boy thinks and operates,

Being the overnight mom to a teen boy came with many challenges, one of them being I didn't know how to piece together what he was feeling or needed.
A regret I have and one I am trying to mend, Books written towards a male teen audience has been very beneficial for me, This is a sequel that could technically be read as a standalone, but I'd still suggest reading the first entry Dear Mr.
Henshaw. That one was a focus on Leigh Bott's letters and diary entries written towards his favorite author, In these entries, it's learned that Leigh's parents are divorced and we see how ayear old is coping with that.
It ended with some nice closure,

With Strider the story is still told in epistolary fashion, Except for this time around, Leigh is a few years older and is about to enter high school, The diary entries begin due to Leigh's mom asking him to clean up his room, which is when he finds all his old writings from the last book.
Right away, it's noticeable that the writing is similar but more angsty, Leigh is growing up. He has a best friend now, is noticing girls, going through growth spurts, finding an image that he is proud of when he dresses.
You know, teenager stuff.

The plot gets going when Leigh and company find a stray dog sitting by the oceanside, It's made clear that the dog was abandoned by the way he acts timid and unwilling to approach anyone but the unknown owner.
Leigh doesn't like the idea of the dog being alone, so when time goes by and the dog is still there, he and his friend decide to coown the dog together to avoid the dog being captured by animal control.
As the dog becomes more familiar with these kids, they learn that he loves to run, so they name him Strider.


Once Strider comes into the story, the majority of subplots revolve around him, For example, Leigh and his friend start to bicker on who might deserve Strider more, A girl notices how happy and outgoing Leigh starts to become, mostly due to Strider pushing him to do more.
Strider also poses a challenge since Leigh and his mom are still in a small house that might not allow animals.
We even get some more story revolving around Leigh's dad which is nice, hence why I think it would benefit from reading the first book.


I wouldn't say book two is better than book one, but I'd pin them close to being equals due to offering different stories.
I think I enjoyed this one a little bit more, I appreciate that Leigh still sounds like Leigh, but just a bit more grownup, While the writing is simple and aimed towards younger readers, the subject matter is still quite mature and I appreciate that I can still enjoy it, even though it didn't get as heavy as the first book.
It also didn't hurt that Pedro Pascal returned as the audiobook narrator, Like the last one, he did a wonderful job in conveying a young kid,

Read this one if you want a simple story about a kid and his dog, There were plenty of moments where I just had to hug my dogs, .