I read a book called Boys Are Dogs by Leslie Margolis. There is a sequel called Girls Acting Catty, it’s really good too. Boys are Dogs is about a girl named Annabelle that has to move from Westlake, California because her mom wants to move in with her boyfriend. So she also has to move away from her girls only school to a boys and girls school called Birchwood Middle School. At first Annabelle is annoyed about the whole move and she just wants to go back to the fun hot days at summer camp. She expects a basketball hoop that her mom might have gotten her to sweeten the move but instead she gets a dog. Once she gets a little settled in she starts training her dog and she make a little progress but school is the thing thats on her mind most of the time. On the first day of school her dog chews up the clothes, and she became late. At school she was confused and turned every which way trying to get to the right room.to make things worse, in her classes she met this boy named Tobias that was mean to her called her spaz or spazabelle and she didn’t have enough courage to stand up for herself and he teased her for that too. But then she realizes that dogs are like boys and she used her dog training book to get boys to stop teasing her. But her biggest problem is her best friend, Rachel’s brother Jackson and she has to stand up to him but that takes a lot of courage but she doesn’t have all of it yet. It take place at Birchwood Middle School and Annabelle’s house.
Some parts of the book I really liked were how training her dog helped find inner courage and and a stronger personality. Also her dog was trained much faster than the boys she was trying to train. When she started speaking her mind in a stronger tone people started listening to her more and respecting her when all her friends were too scared to talk to boys the way she did. Three adjectives I would use to describe her are nice creative and brave. I would use nice because she tried to be nice to her mom’s boyfriend even though she didn’t like him. Creative because not everyone would think of using a dog training book to deal with boys at their school. Also she was pretty creative about what costumes her and her friend should wear for Halloween. Last brave because moving and going to a new school is scary sometimes and she held together.
Also standing up to her bully is really scary but she did it in an authoritative tone.
I enjoyed this book and the reason is I agree that some boys act like dogs sometimes but Annabelle was very enthusiastic about getting boys to treat her fairly. Also I’m moving to a different school in sixth grade and this might be kind of what school might be like. Some people made a movie on disney channel called Zapped which was about a girl thats trying to train her dog with an app on her phone but she drops it in dog poo and now it could control boys. And this movie was inspired buy this book so if you liked the movie zapped than you will probably like this book. I give this book four stars!