Foxy and the Missing Mask
Description
ISBN 0-920806-75-9
Author
Publisher
Year
Contributor
Brigitte Richter was a children's librarian at the Toronto Public Library.
Review
Here is a book which has the potential to be a welcome addition to a children’s collection. It has the ingredients of an exciting story: mystery, adventure, suspense, the relationship between a boy and his dog, and a young boy triumphing over adversity.
Fourteen year-old Mark Crowe, a Kwakiutl Indian whose father carves and sells masks for a living, raises Foxy, a scrawny looking Nova Scotia Duck Trolling Retriever, to become a top quality show dog. When one of his father’s masks is stolen, the family is forced to sell Foxy to a dog breeder, a man who is cold, shrewd and mean. Thus begins Mark’s adventure to get his dog back.
Despite its potential, the story falls short. The plot is trite and without substance and the characters are shallow and unbelievable. For example, the mean breeder who buys Foxy gives Mark a pure-bred puppy at the end of the book. There is no reason for this sudden change in his personality, and such a sudden conversion rings untrue.
More disturbing than this is the portrayal of Mark’s father as a drunken Indian who nurses his whiskey bottle in mid-afternoon, to the embarrassment of his son and his friend. This situation is not relevant to the plot and reinforces the cultural stereotype of the drunken Indian. As well, the language tends to be rather prosaic and unimaginative.