Angus and Sadie

by Cynthia Voigt, Tom Leigh (Illustrator)

Overview

Newbery Medalist Cynthia Voigt presents this charming middle grade novel about two border collie puppies growing up on a farm—a brother and sister who couldn't be more different from each other...or so they think. "Voigt's touch with dogs is as deft as it is with humans," raved The Horn Book.

Angus and Sadie are siblings, but that doesn't mean they're the same. Angus is black-and-white and bigger. He is a good, brave, and clever dog—and he likes that. Sadie, on the other hand, is red-and-white and small. She isn't as quick to learn—or to obey. Angus thinks she's scared of everything, but Sadie knows that's not true. She's just different.

This heartwarming story of two wonderful border collie siblings growing up on a farm in Maine is perfect for young readers who enjoyed Ann M. Martin’s A Dog’s Life and John Grogan’s Marley books, animal lovers of all ages, and anyone who's ever had—or wondered what it would be like to have—a brother or sister just like themselves, but very, very different.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060745844
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/22/2008
Pages:	194
Sales rank:	698,304
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	760L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Cynthia Voigt is the Newbery Medal- and Newbery Honor–winning author of more than twenty books, including Dicey’s Song and A Solitary Blue. She is also the author of Little Bird, illustrated by Newbery Medal–winning author Lynne Rae Perkins. She lives in Maine. 

Read an Excerpt

Angus and Sadie

Chapter One

How Mister and Missus
want a dog and decide to find one

Mister and Missus lived on a farm in Maine. The farm was called the Old Davis Place, because it had belonged to Mister's grandfather. When Old Mr. Davis died, he left the entire farm to his grandson, young Mr. Davis, and the farm kept its name.

The Old Davis Place was a big farm, one hundred and thirty-seven acres of woods and pastures and fields. It backed up against the mountains, so the farm had also some wide stony meadows, which in midsummer were covered with wild blueberries. Two streams ran down from the western mountains, crossing the farm on their way to a distant lake. The streams dug steep ravines out of the hills, and gulleys, too, before they joined together in the woods to make one slower, broader stream that meandered across the lower, flatter pastures and fields.

Mister and Missus raised sheep for wool and chickens for eggs. They kept two Guernsey cows, named Bethie and Annie after queens of England, for milk and butter and sometimes cheese. They planted alfalfa and hay, soybeans and feed corn in their fields. They grew vegetables in a big garden behind the house, and Missus also kept a few flower beds at the front. What they didn't need for themselves, they sold at a summer farm stand at the end of the driveway: vegetables and eggs and sometimes fresh butter. The alfalfa, hay, and corn that they didn't store for winter feed, they sold at the farmer's cooperative in town, as well as wool when they had it. All of the soybeans were sold at the cooperative; the soybeans were their cash crop.

Of course, there were cats on the farm. A farm needs cats. There were two barn cats, and they were hunters. They caught mice and rats, the occasional squirrel, and even the odd unlucky bird. A sleepy marmalade cat named Patches lived in the house, to catch the house mice.

Mister and Missus had sheep, cows, chickens, and cats, but they didn't have a dog. Sometimes they wondered if they might want one. So, one winter day, they went to the library and took out several books to learn about different breeds. They both read the books, and then on the long winter evenings while Missus cut squares of patterned cloth for a quilt and Mister sharpened the rototiller blades, they talked about the kind of dog they would want, if they wanted a dog.

Mister said, "I could train a dog to help herd the sheep and to find the milk cows when they wander off. A dog would keep the chickens safe from foxes and coyotes. The books say that border collies are easy to train, and they like to work hard."

Missus said, "A dog would keep deer out of my vegetable garden and raccoons out of the garbage. A dog would be company for me when you are away all day. The books say that border collies like being with people."

So it was decided. "We definitely need a dog and probably a border collie," Mister said.

"But a purebred dog is awfully expensive and, besides, I like mongrels. I like what happens when different breeds have mixed together to make something new." "It looks like a border collie mongrel would be the perfect dog."

"Let's go to the animal shelter," Missus suggested.

"Not until spring, though. Not until we've moved the sheep out of their pen and up to the spring pasture."

"All right. In spring, we'll get our dog," said Missus.

At the animal shelter, the puppies lived in one big pen by the door, fourteen puppies from eight different litters, all together, all day long, all night long.

It was wonderful for those puppies to be in a big pen with so many friends to chew on and chase after and fight with over the heavy pieces of rope tied in thick knots. For each of them, it was like having thirteen brothers and sisters to sleep in a big warm pile with. And what could be better than thirteen brothers and sisters?

"As it happens, Mr. and Mrs. Davis," the attendant said, "four of our puppies are half border collie. Their father is a registered border collie named Joss and the mother is a shepherd mix, one of your typical mongrels -- a good pet, gentle, and she loves children."

"We don't have children," Mister said.

"But we have friends who do," Missus said.

The attendant went on, "The three black-and-white males are from that litter, and there is one female. She's the sorrel -- that reddish brown one with a cast on her rear leg. Take a look. You can tell the border collies by their coats and their ears and the way they stare. Border collies really stare, and right at you." The attendant looked at his clipboard. "Let me tell you about the shots the puppies have had, and we also require you to have them neutered or spayed." He held out a piece of paper.

But Mister and Missus had stopped paying attention to the attendant and started paying attention to the puppies.

They walked over to the pen and leaned over the wire to get closer. When the puppies caught sight of Mister and Missus, all fourteen of them rushed to greet them, from the biggest (one of the three male part border collies) to the smallest (the little reddish brown female border collie mix, who had a white nose, white paws, and a no-longer-white cast on one rear leg). The puppies ran as fast as they could up to the fence, stumbling over their own feet and one another's feet, too. They rushed to push their noses above the fence and smell the excitement.

Angus and Sadie. Copyright © by Cynthia Voigt. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

1	How Mister and Missus want a dog and decide to find one	1
2	How Angus and Sadie get in trouble and learn their way around, and how Angus is a hero	21
3	How both dogs visit the vet, Angus is better at being trained, and Sadie isn't a fetcher	43
4	How Angus knows best and everyone is weird	65
5	How Missus, Angus, and Sadie harvest blueberries, while Mister harvests hay and Fox harvests a rat	86
6	How Sadie meets a skunk, dances with light, and locates two sheep	99
7	How it's fall, and Thanksgiving	117
8	How it's snow, not Snowing, and then Christmas	132
9	How it's Sadie who is the hero	145
10	How Angus feels when Sadie is the hero	161
11	How everybody knows something but nobody knows everything, and it's not a race	180

Editorial Reviews

Gr 4-6-Two border collie puppies adopted by a Maine farm couple try to decipher what Mister and Missus really want and how to fulfill their role as faithful and useful companions. The pups are polar opposites. Angus is an alpha male with an abundance of self-confidence. Sadie is submissive, introspective, and dominated by her brother. Of course, Mister quickly believes that Angus is the more talented of the pair but Missus reassures Sadie that she is special, too. When Angus's bossiness reaches a peak, Sadie proves to be courageous and smart and he begins to respect her. There is an old-fashioned style to this story about the different personality traits in siblings and learning to respect those differences. The drama is slight-a sheep or two are rescued and two cat bullies are put in their place. Although Sadie is a very sympathetic character, Angus's cockiness borders on annoying, and Mister's attention to him at Sadie's expense seems chauvinistic. The leisurely pace of this story and lack of action may limit its appeal to only the most ardent dog-story enthusiasts.-Carol Schene, Taunton Public Schools, MA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

This unexpectedly simple tale illustrates a year on a farm through the eyes of dogs. Mister and Missus, who want a dog for their Maine farm, adopt two shelter puppies. Mister wants a farm dog and prefers the male; Missus falls for the sweet female with a broken leg. Puppies Angus and Sadie learn about farming, discovering cats, skunks, tractors and sheep. Mister hopes to have better trained dogs than his brother, whose dog competes at trials. Angus is very clever and learns quickly, but Sadie is easily distracted by butterflies and sunbeams. Neither Sadie nor Missus mind that Sadie will never be well trained, but Angus is proud. When Sadie rescues a sheep in a snowstorm, Angus can't bear that she's praised. Incongruously-since until this point the dogs have been minimally anthropomorphized-Angus disrupts Sadie's training by barking, "stay!" when Mister says "come!" All ends well when Angus does well at trials and Missus has a baby. Sweet, with more depth than is usual in such stories, despite the dogs' unevenly human behavior. (Fiction. 8-10)

Kirkus Reviews