Why a Booktrail?
Timeless: Probably one of the most famous dogs in English literature
Lassie Come-home
What you need to know before your trail
Lassie, probably the most famous dog in English literature is a collie who is the pride and joy of a cottager and his family. They take care of him, love him and he is as much a part of the family as they are.
However sadly the family are poor people and soon fall on hard times. Hard times which mean selling Lassie to a wealthy family who they hope will love and care for it as much as they do. But when Lassie’s new owners move al the way to Scotland, Lassie is desperate to return to her previous owners and will stop at nothing to find her way home
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A booktrail via the eyes of a dog is a very special journey indeed. Imagine being taken so far away from your family and then having to find your way home again. From Scotland, all the way across Yorkshire, England. A remarkable journey enough for anyone but especially so for a border collie.
And the author based the village where Lassie searches for on the place he was born – Menston in Yorkshire. And like the dog, he never forgot his Yorkshire roots even when he moved away to the US. Greenall Bridge, where the story starts and ends, is a (fictional) coal mining community in Yorkshire where “of all places in the world it is here that the dog is really king.” Everyone knows and loves Lassie!
Lassie may have been inspired by a real life dog who saved the life of a sailor during WW1. This dog appears in the “Shipwreck Guide to Dorset and South Devon”, written by Nigel Clarke. In this book he writes how in Lyme Regis, close the where the HMS Formidable sank in 1915, the legend of a dog named Lassie who brought a sailor who had been washed ashore in a lifeboat back from death has lasted ever since.
Lassie was also the name of a dog in the story by Elizabeth Gaskell called “The Half-brothers”. This Lassie, also a female border collie is loved only by her young master and ends up saving the day.
Whichever legend or story may or may not be true, the classic tale of a dog searching for its way back home is legendary and a true Children’s classic.
Booktrailer Review
Susan:
I will never forget the day I got the Lassie book and cried all the way through not knowing how or if that poor dog would make it home. I’d read this over and over as an adult and it’s just as good as it ever was and paints a picture of rural England and the poverty of a family forced to sell their best friend. The film was good but why they had to take the poor dog all the way to the US, I don’t know. I think he’d travelled far enough!
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