The Starlight Barking (Paperback)

Pongo and Mrs are living with their extended family of puppies (their owners always keep at least 101 living with them), when one morning, only the dogs wake up. It seems that there is something rather strange happening. The dogs have extraordinary powers including the ability to float rather then run, and they find that these powers have been given to them by Sirius, God of all dogs who lives on the Dogstar. Do they want to join him and live a wonderful doggy life, or stay here with their "owners"?

This book could be considered by some as too far fetched to be enjoyable, but to me it is it's sheer fantasy that makes this such a wonderful read. Cruella de Vil makes a brief appearance, but as she is asleep at the time she doesnt really hold her former terror!

I would recommend this book to anyone, but particularly to anyone who likes to read stories to their children. This is the perfect bedtime read for any child, I had it read to me and I have read it to my own children. It is worth the effort to find a copy.

Here, the first thing that happens on the fine summer day on which the story begins, when Pongo and Missis wake in their human pets' room at Hell Hall, is that they begin learning that a lot of their normal limitations have mysteriously vanished. None of the dogs are hungry (amazing in itself with so many young mothers and puppies on the premises), doors and gates mysteriously open whenever the dogs need to get into or out of a place, and they can move much faster than usual. But these changes are accompanied by frightening events - the Dearlys and even the Persian cats are sleeping normally and even smiling in their sleep, but will not wake.

Pongo meets with the General (formerly a Colonel), who as a working sheepdog on a nearby farm is very practiced at organization and strategy, to find that the unbreakable sleep seems to have affected *all* living creatures other than dogs. They are soon contacted by Cadpig, the youngest of the Pongos' first litter, who alone chose to get a pet of her own - by tagging along on one of Mr. Dearly's consultations with the government to help deal with the national debt, she got her dearest wish of being on television by becoming the Prime Minister's pet. That in itself is a good story - the poor man was so touched by her display of obvious affection for him when most people had nothing nice to say about him that he was glad to have her. She improved his approval ratings so much that most high-ranking government officials followed suit and got dogs - and now those dogs are acting in place of their sleeping humans to direct the country, so that Cadpig is acting as Prime Minister and trying to keep all the dogs calm and figure out what's going on - and she asks her father to join her in London as an adviser. (Her mother, unasked, also gives her some sound advice - while Missis may not be as intellectual as Pongo, she has good sense and good instincts, while Cadpig is so bossy that she goes overboard at trying to organize things.)

The core cast of THE 101 DALMATIANS quickly reassembles, as Prince and Perdita are left to look after the Dearlys and the Pongos take their now-grown first litter with them to London. (It's a pity that Prince isn't much developed as a character, but Perdita's homelessness in early youth left its mark, and leaving the two of them at Hell Hall makes the cast in this book track that of the previous book more closely.) The cats from the first book and even young Tommy, the General's particular pet human, eventually wake up and join in, although all the other creatures remain asleep - this is put down to their having been made honorary dogs. (Tommy is particularly interested - although he's still very young, he's greatly interested in science fiction.)

About three quarters of the book is spent travelling through this world effectively populated only by dogs - dealing with traffic problems in London as so many dogs try to get around (even when they can effectively fly, the crowding causes problems) and watching the canine cabinet trying to get a grip on the crisis. (This is a particularly nice bit of irony, as none of the dogs or even their humans have been in danger, even though strange things have been going on.) Only in the last quarter of the book are the dogs made aware of *why* these things have been happening to them, and given a choice about deciding what kind of a world they really want to live in and where their loyalties lie.