Looking for True
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
When two unlikely friends bond over shared compassion for a bereft but lovable dog, they learn what it truly means to find a sense of belonging and identity.
Eleven-year-olds Gladys and Jude live in the same small rust belt town, and go to the same school, but they are definitely not friends. Gladys is a tiny, eccentric, walking dictionary who doesn’t hesitate to express herself, while Jude likes to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself. But they both agree that a new dog in the neighborhood is being mistreated by its owner.
Gladys would like to do something to help, while Jude is more resigned to the situation— until the dog (who Gladys has named True Blue) disappears. They hatch a plan to find her, and once they do, realize they have a problem: Gladys’s father is allergic and Jude’s mother hates dogs. There is no way they can bring her home.
They hide True Blue in an abandoned house on the edge of town, but as their ties to the dog—and to one another—deepen, so does the impossibility of keeping such a big secret. Yet giving True up will break all three of their hearts.
Told in alternating voices set in a small, rust-belt town, Looking for True is a story about family, identity, and finding friends in unexpected places.
A Horn Book Fanfare Title
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Springstubb (The Most Perfect Thing in the Universe) crafts a heartfelt contemporary novel about unexpected friendship that kicks off with a Because of Winn-Dixie–tinged bond. When talkative, small-for-her age Gladys encounters quiet Jude, who's tall for his, the 11-year-olds feel an instant connection with a seemingly mistreated mutt in their small-town neighborhood. Neither can take the hound home: Jude's widowed mother fears dogs following a bite, and Gladys's father is severely allergic. Desperate to save the dog that Gladys calls True Blue, the tweens hide her in an abandoned house after they discover she's escaped from her owner's yard. The stakes grow more complicated when Jude's mother loses her job at a nursing home, resulting in tight finances for the family, and True Blue's owner offers a $500 reward for the dog's return. As each child navigates familial relationships—Gladys, who is adopted, around belonging and love, and Jude around a desire to make his mother proud—Springstubb gracefully conveys their need for both connection and independence, portraying sweet, protective relationships that each has with young children. Alternating third-person perspectives render unique characterizations. Jude cues as white; Gladys, depicted on the book's cover with brown skin, is described as having "recalcitrant" hair that "sprang out like the rays of the sun." Ages 8–12.
