By Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
A boy finds a beaten beagle and hides him from the cruel man who owns him, and lies to his whole family to keep the dog safe.
Marty Preston is out walking the hills near his home in West Virginia when a skinny, scared beagle starts following him. Marty knows the dog. It belongs to Judd Travers, a neighbor who treats his hunting dogs badly, and one look tells him this one has good reason to be afraid. When the beagle comes running to him a second time, Marty can't hand him back. He hides the dog up on the hill, names him Shiloh, and starts sneaking him food. That means lying to his family, and, sooner or later, facing Judd.
Marty's love for Shiloh is the simple part. Everything around it is hard. The dog belongs to someone cruel, so protecting him means lying, over and over, to good people who trust Marty. Naylor doesn't make it easy and she doesn't preach. She lets a child sit with a genuinely hard question, whether a lie is ever the right thing, and trusts them to work it out. It's short, it moves fast, and it asks more of an animal-loving reader than almost anything else at this age.