Baby by Joseph Monnninger

Okay, I know you can't judge a book by its cover, but I was really braced to be underwhelmed by this book. The cover art is drab, and the blurb on the flap reads like a sixth-grader's C- book report. So, I was pleasantly surprised by what I found inside. Baby is a troubled foster kid who goes to live with a couple in the woods of New Hampshire where she learns how to dogsled. Of course she runs away with her loser boyfriend, and of course she sees the error of her ways, and of course she comes back and lives with her new foster family, and of course she discovers an affinity for the dogs and racing. No surprises there. The surprise is Monninger's writing style -- he races dogs himself, and you can see his love for the sport in every line. When he's writing about the racing, it's pure poetry. Not enough for anything but a NAY here, but if he were to stick to writing about what he loves, I would snatch up a nonfiction account of dogsledding from him in a heartbeat.