Stella by McCall Hoyle

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Description: 

Told from Stella's perspective, this story is about a special dog who must find the courage to overcome her fears in order to help save a young girl with epilepsy.

Ever since she was a puppy, Stella was trained to use her powerful beagle nose to sniff out dangerous chemicals and help her handler keep people safe. But during a routine security inspection, Stella misses the scent of an explosive. The sound of the blast is loud and scary. Unable to go back to work because of her anxiety, Stella is retired as a working dog.

When a young girl named Cloe wants to adopt Stella, the beagle knows this is her last chance to prove her worth. But how? When Stella smells a strange chemical inside Cloe's body, a scent that surges just before the girl has a seizure, Stella's nose makes the connection. But how can Stella warn her new family without them thinking she's having an anxiety attack? How can she convince others that she can be a new kind of service dog and hopefully save Cloe's life?

General Content:

Language: 0/10- Little to no derogatory language/ references.

Alcohol & Drugs: 0/10- Little to no alcohol or drug content.

Violence & Gore: 1/10- A bomb is said to have gone off in the airport Stella works at, killing her owner. This is just talked about/ hinted at and does not go into detail. A neighbor fires a gun in the distance.

Sexual Content: 0/10- No sexual content.

Age Recommendation: 8-11, 3rd-5th grade.

Overall, Stella is a really good book about a sweet dog and her human. It does however, contain difficult topics like epilepsy, airport security, and dealing with death.

Parent Guide:

-Stella was an airport dog whose job was to smell chemicals; therefore, mentions of explosions and bombs are present occasionally throughout the novel. She also often gets frightened by loud sounds, which bring back memories and flashbacks of the explosion at the airport.

Ch. 3-4

-When Stella acts up, her new owner brings her back to where she got her. There is talk about the doctor “putting her out of her misery” as she will never recover from losing her handler.

-The new dog trainer who will work with Stella believes it will benefit Stella to bring her to say goodbye to her old handler, Connie. She brings Stella to a graveyard where she can “say goodbye” to Connie.

Here is how it plays out in the novel:

“Beneath all the alive smells is the smell of decaying wood buried underground and the smell of the outside of human bodies. I know this smell. I recognize it from the day Doc Collins put Sarge into the deep, deep sleep and then placed him in the box. And I remember it from a night in the city with Connie when she gave me the command to find, and I found the burning chemical smell on the body of a man lying in a ditch on the side of the road. Confused, I lift my head and stand very still. It’s a Connie smell. I lower my head to the ground. Exhaling through my nose, I stir up scents from the grass. My long, thick ears trap the smells, concentrate them, and send them back down to my nose. It’s definitely Connie. But it’s not my Connie. It’s the still-sleeping-shell-of-Connie smell”.

Ch.7

-Stella’s new family lives on a farm, and they begin to rehabilitate her. While they are rehabilitating, a neighbor fires a gun off in the distance, this sound startles Stella.

Ch.10

-Stella smells the sign of a seizure in her new owner. Her owner then begins to have a seizure, her mother tells another woman that her daughter has epilepsy. This is how it plays out in the novel:

“Cloe’s arms jerk and twitch. Her head shakes as she stares blankly at the sky. When I inch closer to her, one of her flopping arms swats my neck. I don’t care. I want to be close to her in case there’s something—anything—I can do to help”.

Ch.14-18

-The neighbors' nephews throw firework packets at Stella, and she is hit and runs away. Because of this, her owner, Chloe, gets lost as well. Her mom calls the police department to search around their land in the forest.

Ch.19

-Stella finds Chloe lying on the ground near a forest fire. She is unresponsive, and the smell of a seizure is strong. Stella barks viciously until the police arrive. Stella is a hero.