By John Reynolds Gardiner
A boy enters a dogsled race with his dog Searchlight to win the prize money and save his grandfather's farm. It's under a hundred pages, and it's one of the saddest.
Little Willy lives on a Wyoming potato farm with his grandfather, until one morning Grandfather won't get out of bed. Willy works out that he's given up: he owes back taxes and is about to lose the farm. So Willy does the one thing he can think of. He enters the National Dogsled Race, where the prize money is exactly what he needs, with his own fast, loyal dog Searchlight pulling the sled. His rival is Stone Fox, a silent Shoshone racer who has never lost. It's a tiny book with enormous stakes, and it moves like a downhill run. It also has one of the most famous sad endings in all of children's books, so read the watch-for before you start.
For a reluctant reader, this one works almost too well. It's short, the sentences are plain and fast, and the stakes are clear from the first pages: a boy trying to save his grandfather and his home. There's no slow stretch to push through, and it reads like a race because it is one. It also makes the case, to a child who thinks a short book is a baby book, that eighty pages can hit as hard as three hundred. Just know the ending asks a lot, so try to be nearby when your child gets there.