Tupelo Rides the Rails by Melissa Sweet

Tupelo Rides the Rails by Melissa Sweet
This book included a lot of visual in the forms of colorful illustrations and the occasional fold out pages that have text and pictures on it. Even though the illustrations and pictures were very attractive, I thought the story was kind of melancholy. It's basically about a dog who longs for someone to own him. He stumbled upon a group of dogs who were wishing on the star Sirius (which is the 'big dog' star according to them). They were all burying their bones and "offering" them to Sirius in order to have their wishes granted. All the dogs basically get their wishes granted but Tupelo is left to ride the trains by himself to a different town. The story does redeem itself at the end when a local hobo adopts Tupelo. The hobo and Tupelo seem to actually have some things in common, like neither one has a permanent place to call home and need that one person-or dog to go through life with. The book has an obvious star reference so the author includes some fun star facts related to dogs to enhance the story. I feel like this story could cause students to really empathize with Tupelo and how he feels.