Dingo is a hardcover.

Reviews

Booklist, American Library Association, May 15, 2008 Seventeen-year-old Miguel is drawn to beautiful Lainey from the moment she and her dog appear outside his dad's comics and music store. He soon learns that this Australian teenager and her identical twin are shape shifters, sometimes appearing as young women and sometimes as dingoes ("the ancestors of all dog breeds"), but that doesn't change his sudden, deep affection for her. Meanwhile, Miguel's nemesis, Johnny, troubled and a troublemaker, has fallen in love with Lainey's sister, Em. Together, the four venture into the dreamworld to challenge the power threatening the twins. Canadian fantasy writer de Lint draws from Australian lore to create otherworldly elements in the novel, making smooth transitions from everyday settings to altered realities within Miguel's accessible first-person narrative. The occasional use of coarse (though appropriate) language may keep the book out of some middle-school libraries, but with its appealing jacket art, this tautly written, imaginative fantasy will find its audience. Kirkus, February 2008 Miguel Schreiber and his dad, a former biker who buys and sells comics and vinyl, live in the Point near the ocean. Australian Lainey and her twin sister Em have just moved to town; it seems they're being stalked by an ancient dingo spirit, and their stepfather tries to keep them safe by moving constantly and homeschooling the girls who, to complicate things a bit further, are both shapechangers. A rich vein of Australian lore wraps around this story, as Miguel seeks to free Lainey, with the help of the town bully, who has fallen for Em. What's wonderful here is trademark de Lint: The Dreamtime and the spirits of those long dead take their places in a contemporary American world of high school, iPods and cell phones. Miguel tells this tale in a slightly stilted, self-conscious voice, understandable for a motherless teen who falls in love with a girl who spends part of her time as a dingo. Miguel is a nifty character, and his dad even more so, and the satisfying ending is romantic as heck. (Fantasy. 12+) Publishers Weekly, February 2008 (starred review) World Fantasy Award winner de Lint (The Blue Girl), known for sophisticated urban fantasies that incorporate Celtic and Native American myths, branches out to include Australian folklore with this tale of Miguel Schreiber, a teenager who discovers that his new Aussie girlfriend, Lainey, is something other than human. As it turns out, she and her grouchy twin sister, Em, are shape-changers—half human, half dingo. Stranger still, their birth father, Tallyman, also a shape-changer, has been sent to capture them by Warrigal, the first Dingo, who has been trapped in a fig tree in the Australian dreamtime for centuries and needs their blood to free himself. Miguel, the twins and Johnny Ward, the local bully (Em likes him), must find some way to defeat these two powerful enemies if the girls are ever to live free from fear. Featuring simplified versions of its author's signature story elements—likable, if flawed protagonists, well-developed contemporary locales and the introduction of potent mythic chacters directly into our world—this novella succeeds in its own right and, like Little (Grrl) Lost, will help attract readers to de Lint's more powerful work for older teens and adults. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)