Richie's Picks: LAIKA, a graphic novel by Nick Abadzis, First Second,
September 2007, ISBN: 1-59643-101-6
"I do it for the joy it brings
because I'm a joyful girl."
-- Ani Difranco, "Joyful Girl"
I need to complete this review promptly. Shari has extracted a promise that
I will give Joyful Girl -- our flat-coated retriever -- a bath this
afternoon.
Shari is forever encouraging me to take Joyful for more walks and to refrain
from always topping Joyful's nightly dinner with one of those little packets
of parmesan cheese that come from the pizza places. (Joyful's affinity for
dog food parmesan has been responsible for my steadily using up years' worth
of packets we'd accumulated.) Our once-upon-a-puppy will be celebrating her
tenth birthday in a few months. Sam Wise, her goofy son who also resides
here at the farm, is now five.
Back amidst my own puppy hood days -- circa 1959 -- a picture book that I
picked up in the Plainview Library and begged Mom to read to me over and over
again was Marguerite Henry's MULEY-EARS: NOBODY'S DOG. Over the years since
then, I have regularly experienced all sorts of great books involving stray
dogs. From Henry Huggins finding Ribsy, to Opal Buloni's initial encounter
with Winn-Dixie, to the stray dog in Mary Pope Osborne's ADALINE FALLING STAR,
and JJ's discovery of Bran in THE NEW POLICEMAN, I have read many stray dog
stories that have touched me and stayed with me.
"Just thinking about tomorrow,
Clears away the cobwebs, and the sorrow
'Till there's none."
-- Annie singing to Sandy
Fifty years ago, in 1957, I was too young to pay attention to the story of
the dog named Laika who orbited the Earth in Sputnik II. A hastily-assembled
space mission envisioned by Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev to coincide with
the fortieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, it was decided that a
dog would go along for the ride. As we find out late in Nick Abadzis' story,
LAIKA, no provision was made for bringing the dog back to Earth alive.
The author-illustrator has immersed himself in tracking down the histories
of Laika, of the Space Race, the Cold War, and earlier Russian events in order
to create an exceptional graphic novel that portrays the historically-based
tale of the stray dog-turned-fated space explorer who was dubbed Muttnik in
the US. But that is only the latter two-thirds of the book. The story that
can be determined is preceded by an imagined how-she-came-to-be-a-stray dog
childhood about which there is, of course, no information.
The tragic story of Laika's demise for the sake of Soviet glory centers
around the interplay of three lives: Laika, Laika's loving female trainer, and
the Chief Designer of the Soviet space program.
To think that the death of a stray dog unknown to me and back fifty years in
the past could make my heart hurt so badly certainly attests to the
remarkable job British artist-writer Nick Abadzis has accomplished.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/)
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(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/)
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