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Good Boy
Sandie has been battling it since childhood: the hulking, snarling black dog of her nightmares. For years, her precious pet dog Rabbie has kept the monster at bay, but when he is no longer there to protect her, the black dog reappears to stalk Sandie in her sleep ... Illuminating the undeniable power of Mal Peet's pared-back prose, Good Boy is an evocative examination of fear and anxiety that will leave you guessing long after its final page. Particularly suitable for struggling, reluctant or dyslexic readers aged 14+
88 pages, Paperback
Published March 15, 2019
About the author
Mal Peet
84 books118 followersMal Peet grew up in North Norfolk, and studied English and American Studies at the University of Warwick. Later he moved to southwest England and worked at a variety of jobs before turning full-time to writing and illustrating in the early 1990s. With his wife, Elspeth Graham, he had written and illustrated many educational picture books for young children, and his cartoons have appeared in a number of magazines.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
February 14, 2023
I did like it but it was a little short and not as psychological as I expected it to be
January 7, 2023
This book was originally introduced to me, saying that there is a story that makes no sense to anyone who reads it. But I don't think so, albeit there is certainly a point to that opinion.
This story is elusive and difficult to explain. However, the most strange thing about this story is that I don't feel the stress of "not making sense" while I'm reading it. What I feel when reading this book is a sense of "I don't know, but I know what it is". When I am following the development of a story, it somehow seems to make sense in a non-theoretical way. And only when I try to explain it objectively to others, I think "What?". The feeling is similar to that of reading a fairy tale. Why is it that fairy tales are so often unexplainable and absurd, yet somehow satisfying? This is because these seemingly inexplicable stories are in line with the way our minds work according to a kind of logic. So is this story. That is why this story somehow seems to make sense, even though it cannot be well verbalized.
The story of the book is as follows. (Please be careful if you have not read this book yet.)
The book begins with a young girl, Sandie, who is tormented by nightmares every night. The nightmares are abstract and always the same. In her dreams, she is walking down the garden path. It's very dark. Then the gate opens without her touching it. She walks through it and reach to the edge of the precipice. At the bottom of the drop, there are bright wriggling worms, yellow and white and red. The wind's moan swells, fades, swells again. She turns back the way she has come, but the garden and the house have gone. All she can see is the ragged horizon where the pitch-dark of the land meets the dark grey of the sky. And here it comes, walking along the horizon. It's a black and very large dog. This one fills her with terror. ーFearing this black dog, she eventually becomes reluctant to even sleep, and her counselor suggests to get a real dog as a countermeasure to her nightmares. So she gets a dog named Rabbie, and thanks to him, the black dog gradually vanishes from her nights. Time passes, and Sandie becomes a police officer. However, just the day she get the job, Rabbie dies of old age. Since then, the nightmare comes back again. Although it afflicts Sandie, she continues to work as a police officer. And one day, she has a strange experience in which her reality is eroded by years of nightmares. It starts on a November night. When she is in a patrol car, Control comes on the radio. "Reported violent incident at Dover House on the Eden estate". She rushes there and finds a victim with a gunshot wound. So she chases the gunman to the rooftop. But it is a trap. He hides in the shadow and waits for her, then appears behind her. This scene resembles the dream she has been having for a long time. Far below, the lights of traffic are twisting worms of red and white and yellow. The moan of approaching patrol cars swells, fades, swells again. She tries to escape from him, but suddenly, she finds a black dog in front of her. It's a dog in her nightmare. She thinks it's must be her death and gets ready to die. After that, something unexpected occurs. It is not Sandie that the black dog attacks, but the man behind her. After tearing the man into pieces, it approaches Sandie. And she says "Good boy" to it. It was something she used to say to Rabbie, who used to stay close to her and protect her from her nightmares. ―A short time later, a fellow officer rushes in to find Sandie on the roof and a man who is intact as if he had never been attacked by a black dog, but shaking and sobbing like someone waking from a nightmare.
Most puzzling is the scene at the end where Sandie is cornered by a man with a gun. There are two main unexplainable points. One is that the black dog, which was supposed to appear only in nightmares, has even appeared in reality. The black dog is recognized not only by Sandie but also by the criminal man who corners her. So the dog at this time is not her mere hallucination. But it is also not fully embodied as a real-world entity. As proof, the man who was supposed to have been torn to pieces by the black dog is unharmed as if nothing had happened when Sandie's fellow police officers rush to the scene. What it means is that Sandie and the man in this scene were temporarily in a world on the border between nightmare and reality. It seems strange that Sandie and the man, who were supposed to be in the real world just a moment ago, somehow wandered into such a world without any trigger. But come to think of it, this is not so unusual in the world of storytelling. For example, in fairy tales such as "Hansel and Gretel" and "Red Riding Hood," the main characters seamlessly enter an unreal world from their very ordinary, real lives. When we hear fairy tales, we naturally accept them without question. This is because the development of the story is not inconsistent with the movement of our minds, which are anticipating that something must happen because the story has begun, that whatever events could happen because this is a story, and that whatever happens, it must happen in a way that relates to the part we are reading now where nothing has happened yet. The events that took place in this story are also strange, but they do not contradict these expectations that we have before we come into contact with the story. The fact that Sandie's dream has eroded into reality is in keeping with our anticipation, "Sandie's dream, described at the beginning, must be related to the events that are to come." It's a little surprising that a man unrelated to Sandie has been pulled into the same dream as her, but this is because the unrealistic elements in the first half of the story are particularly thin, and an expectation was beginning to develop that this story would be one in which unrealistic elements would not appear. Once we understand that the story contains unrealistic elements, we can quickly change course and accept that this is a story about that. And once we are convinced that this is the kind of story it is, the appearance of the black dog, a symbol of fear, in front of her in danger of death seems like a rather straightforward development. Perhaps that's why I can accept this story naturally. The second unexplainable point is that the black dog, which was supposed to symbolize Sandie's fear, attacked the man, not her. If the black dog appeared as a symbol of Sandie's fear, it would seem more natural for the black dog to attack her as a metaphorical representation of her being engulfed by fear. Even to me, until about halfway through, the black dog's behavior seemed contrary to my expectations. So how could it be that, in the end, I was able to "sort of understand" this development? Perhaps the reason for this lies in Sandie's words to the black dog, "Good boy". As mentioned above, these words were often spoken by her as a child to her dog, Rabbie, who protected her from nightmares. Rabbie was an important emotional support for Sandie in the first half of this story. Just because they are gone, we cannot assume that they will completely disappear from our minds as if they had never existed in the first place. So we read this work with the possibility in our minds that the influence Rabbie has left on Sandie will somehow be involved in the nightmare, which is also one of her emotional movements. So, if Rabbie is going to be involved in the story along with the black dog's nightmare, what role would be natural for it to play there? What seems most likely is that it will appear as an image of power to resist and overcome fear. As we read on, anticipating such a possibility, her words "Good boy" seems like connecting the event of the black dog's attack on the man with the Rabbie as a symbol of power against fear. It allows us to interpret that the black dog acted this way because the traces Rabbie left in Sandie's mind transformed the black dog from a symbol of fear into a force against fear. The movement of the mind in which the destructive, violent, and terrible thing within oneself is separated from "a part of oneself" to become "something that is not oneself" and attack oneself, or in which the violent power of the terrible thing is taken into oneself to confront the object of fear itself, is mentioned by Erich Neumann, a student of Jung, in "History of the Origin of Consciousness" and other writings. In myths and fairy tales, such destructive and frightening parts of the mind often seem to be represented in the form of ferocious beasts. Perhaps the reason I eventually felt as if I "understood something" about black dog's behavior was because I had somehow agreed with such a state of mind of my own, and felt that this development was in line with such a form of mind.When I think about it in this way, I begin to feel that this last part, which at first glance seems to be the most unrealistic, may actually be the most realistic. What is most realistic is that her nightmare fears are overcome with mysterious timing, while she herself cannot fully grasp why. Understanding the mind is a very difficult task. Although psychologists appear in this story, they are not depicted as being capable of dramatic treatment. In light of this, one might say that this practice of using books on psychology as clues for interpreting works of literature and art also requires a certain amount of caution. But it is impossible not to try to understand something about the mind, which is in every person, including ourselves, and is the driving force that moves us. This is even more so if it sometimes hurts others and ourselves. Therefore, we think about the state of our minds in various ways, and try to understand our minds and guide them in the right direction. However, we cannot completely control when, and how the human mind moves in response to what. In the end, there are many cases all we can do is just waiting after doing the best we can. That can be tough at times. But even so, the various actions that have been performed on someone's mind have certainly been accumulated there. And these efforts sometimes bear fruit in unexpected ways. I feel that's why it is important to read a variety of stories, including this one.
This story is elusive and difficult to explain. However, the most strange thing about this story is that I don't feel the stress of "not making sense" while I'm reading it. What I feel when reading this book is a sense of "I don't know, but I know what it is". When I am following the development of a story, it somehow seems to make sense in a non-theoretical way. And only when I try to explain it objectively to others, I think "What?". The feeling is similar to that of reading a fairy tale. Why is it that fairy tales are so often unexplainable and absurd, yet somehow satisfying? This is because these seemingly inexplicable stories are in line with the way our minds work according to a kind of logic. So is this story. That is why this story somehow seems to make sense, even though it cannot be well verbalized.
The story of the book is as follows. (Please be careful if you have not read this book yet.)
The book begins with a young girl, Sandie, who is tormented by nightmares every night. The nightmares are abstract and always the same. In her dreams, she is walking down the garden path. It's very dark. Then the gate opens without her touching it. She walks through it and reach to the edge of the precipice. At the bottom of the drop, there are bright wriggling worms, yellow and white and red. The wind's moan swells, fades, swells again. She turns back the way she has come, but the garden and the house have gone. All she can see is the ragged horizon where the pitch-dark of the land meets the dark grey of the sky. And here it comes, walking along the horizon. It's a black and very large dog. This one fills her with terror. ーFearing this black dog, she eventually becomes reluctant to even sleep, and her counselor suggests to get a real dog as a countermeasure to her nightmares. So she gets a dog named Rabbie, and thanks to him, the black dog gradually vanishes from her nights. Time passes, and Sandie becomes a police officer. However, just the day she get the job, Rabbie dies of old age. Since then, the nightmare comes back again. Although it afflicts Sandie, she continues to work as a police officer. And one day, she has a strange experience in which her reality is eroded by years of nightmares. It starts on a November night. When she is in a patrol car, Control comes on the radio. "Reported violent incident at Dover House on the Eden estate". She rushes there and finds a victim with a gunshot wound. So she chases the gunman to the rooftop. But it is a trap. He hides in the shadow and waits for her, then appears behind her. This scene resembles the dream she has been having for a long time. Far below, the lights of traffic are twisting worms of red and white and yellow. The moan of approaching patrol cars swells, fades, swells again. She tries to escape from him, but suddenly, she finds a black dog in front of her. It's a dog in her nightmare. She thinks it's must be her death and gets ready to die. After that, something unexpected occurs. It is not Sandie that the black dog attacks, but the man behind her. After tearing the man into pieces, it approaches Sandie. And she says "Good boy" to it. It was something she used to say to Rabbie, who used to stay close to her and protect her from her nightmares. ―A short time later, a fellow officer rushes in to find Sandie on the roof and a man who is intact as if he had never been attacked by a black dog, but shaking and sobbing like someone waking from a nightmare.
Most puzzling is the scene at the end where Sandie is cornered by a man with a gun. There are two main unexplainable points. One is that the black dog, which was supposed to appear only in nightmares, has even appeared in reality. The black dog is recognized not only by Sandie but also by the criminal man who corners her. So the dog at this time is not her mere hallucination. But it is also not fully embodied as a real-world entity. As proof, the man who was supposed to have been torn to pieces by the black dog is unharmed as if nothing had happened when Sandie's fellow police officers rush to the scene. What it means is that Sandie and the man in this scene were temporarily in a world on the border between nightmare and reality. It seems strange that Sandie and the man, who were supposed to be in the real world just a moment ago, somehow wandered into such a world without any trigger. But come to think of it, this is not so unusual in the world of storytelling. For example, in fairy tales such as "Hansel and Gretel" and "Red Riding Hood," the main characters seamlessly enter an unreal world from their very ordinary, real lives. When we hear fairy tales, we naturally accept them without question. This is because the development of the story is not inconsistent with the movement of our minds, which are anticipating that something must happen because the story has begun, that whatever events could happen because this is a story, and that whatever happens, it must happen in a way that relates to the part we are reading now where nothing has happened yet. The events that took place in this story are also strange, but they do not contradict these expectations that we have before we come into contact with the story. The fact that Sandie's dream has eroded into reality is in keeping with our anticipation, "Sandie's dream, described at the beginning, must be related to the events that are to come." It's a little surprising that a man unrelated to Sandie has been pulled into the same dream as her, but this is because the unrealistic elements in the first half of the story are particularly thin, and an expectation was beginning to develop that this story would be one in which unrealistic elements would not appear. Once we understand that the story contains unrealistic elements, we can quickly change course and accept that this is a story about that. And once we are convinced that this is the kind of story it is, the appearance of the black dog, a symbol of fear, in front of her in danger of death seems like a rather straightforward development. Perhaps that's why I can accept this story naturally. The second unexplainable point is that the black dog, which was supposed to symbolize Sandie's fear, attacked the man, not her. If the black dog appeared as a symbol of Sandie's fear, it would seem more natural for the black dog to attack her as a metaphorical representation of her being engulfed by fear. Even to me, until about halfway through, the black dog's behavior seemed contrary to my expectations. So how could it be that, in the end, I was able to "sort of understand" this development? Perhaps the reason for this lies in Sandie's words to the black dog, "Good boy". As mentioned above, these words were often spoken by her as a child to her dog, Rabbie, who protected her from nightmares. Rabbie was an important emotional support for Sandie in the first half of this story. Just because they are gone, we cannot assume that they will completely disappear from our minds as if they had never existed in the first place. So we read this work with the possibility in our minds that the influence Rabbie has left on Sandie will somehow be involved in the nightmare, which is also one of her emotional movements. So, if Rabbie is going to be involved in the story along with the black dog's nightmare, what role would be natural for it to play there? What seems most likely is that it will appear as an image of power to resist and overcome fear. As we read on, anticipating such a possibility, her words "Good boy" seems like connecting the event of the black dog's attack on the man with the Rabbie as a symbol of power against fear. It allows us to interpret that the black dog acted this way because the traces Rabbie left in Sandie's mind transformed the black dog from a symbol of fear into a force against fear. The movement of the mind in which the destructive, violent, and terrible thing within oneself is separated from "a part of oneself" to become "something that is not oneself" and attack oneself, or in which the violent power of the terrible thing is taken into oneself to confront the object of fear itself, is mentioned by Erich Neumann, a student of Jung, in "History of the Origin of Consciousness" and other writings. In myths and fairy tales, such destructive and frightening parts of the mind often seem to be represented in the form of ferocious beasts. Perhaps the reason I eventually felt as if I "understood something" about black dog's behavior was because I had somehow agreed with such a state of mind of my own, and felt that this development was in line with such a form of mind.When I think about it in this way, I begin to feel that this last part, which at first glance seems to be the most unrealistic, may actually be the most realistic. What is most realistic is that her nightmare fears are overcome with mysterious timing, while she herself cannot fully grasp why. Understanding the mind is a very difficult task. Although psychologists appear in this story, they are not depicted as being capable of dramatic treatment. In light of this, one might say that this practice of using books on psychology as clues for interpreting works of literature and art also requires a certain amount of caution. But it is impossible not to try to understand something about the mind, which is in every person, including ourselves, and is the driving force that moves us. This is even more so if it sometimes hurts others and ourselves. Therefore, we think about the state of our minds in various ways, and try to understand our minds and guide them in the right direction. However, we cannot completely control when, and how the human mind moves in response to what. In the end, there are many cases all we can do is just waiting after doing the best we can. That can be tough at times. But even so, the various actions that have been performed on someone's mind have certainly been accumulated there. And these efforts sometimes bear fruit in unexpected ways. I feel that's why it is important to read a variety of stories, including this one.
June 20, 2020
Er, what is this? On the back of the book it is listed as 'super-readable YA' so I think that means it is aimed at a teenage audience who have literacy issues. I wouldn't say that the content of the story felt like a children's book but it lacked the depth of an adult novel, so I suppose YA might be the intended audience. The main character starts out as a child but within a few pages we have skipped ahead to her growing up and the scenes of her as a child are explained from the POV of the adults around her which is a very odd way to go if you are writing for a young audience.
The print is very big and spaced apart as if for someone who is learning to read, which was unfortunately off-putting for me and I sometimes struggled to follow the sentences because they were so spread out! It is an illustrated story, but while some of the images are quite clever, with the shadow of the dog being seen across an ordinary scene, overall they didn't particularly move or inspire me.
It's strange that this is an entire book because it is just a short story, rather coldly narrated and, being the horror genre, I didn't understand what it meant. However, if it is aimed at encouraging teenagers with learning difficulties to read, then I'm sure it has plenty of worth for its intended audience.
The print is very big and spaced apart as if for someone who is learning to read, which was unfortunately off-putting for me and I sometimes struggled to follow the sentences because they were so spread out! It is an illustrated story, but while some of the images are quite clever, with the shadow of the dog being seen across an ordinary scene, overall they didn't particularly move or inspire me.
It's strange that this is an entire book because it is just a short story, rather coldly narrated and, being the horror genre, I didn't understand what it meant. However, if it is aimed at encouraging teenagers with learning difficulties to read, then I'm sure it has plenty of worth for its intended audience.
January 8, 2025
TW: death of pet dog, blood, shooting, racism/classism
I loved the illustrations, they were stunning and really set the ambiance of the story.
However it all fell apart at the end. The mc becomes a cop and gets called to a shooting at council housing, where people have 'dreads' and speak MLE. When the author goes out of their way to phonetically spell out the accent of one group, in order to drive a separation, that is problematic. No other characters had their accent type phonetically spelled out, only the ones in the area of public housing and violence. This has real world implications of othering and cements biases and assumptions.
I loved the illustrations, they were stunning and really set the ambiance of the story.
However it all fell apart at the end. The mc becomes a cop and gets called to a shooting at council housing, where people have 'dreads' and speak MLE. When the author goes out of their way to phonetically spell out the accent of one group, in order to drive a separation, that is problematic. No other characters had their accent type phonetically spelled out, only the ones in the area of public housing and violence. This has real world implications of othering and cements biases and assumptions.
February 17, 2019
Good Boy begins with the nightmare that haunts Sandie. Those beginning pages are haunting, both with Mal Peet's writing and Emma Shoard's artwork. It's a very impactful start.
The rest of the book tells Sandie's story from childhood to adulthood. The black black dog is with her throughout, kept at bay by her pet but never truly gone.
The language in this story is so effective. It is only short but Good Boy definitely leaves a lasting impression.
The rest of the book tells Sandie's story from childhood to adulthood. The black black dog is with her throughout, kept at bay by her pet but never truly gone.
The language in this story is so effective. It is only short but Good Boy definitely leaves a lasting impression.
March 25, 2019
This is a fantastic story, personifying anxiety as a black dog. It's amazing how so much story can be fitted into so few pages. It had me right on the edge of my seat from the first few lines. It's a dark story, and one I think will stay with me for a while.
May 6, 2019
Powerful, disquieting with beautiful spare prose that gets your heart racing with just a few well chosen words. Themes of anxiety and coping mechanisms wrapped up in an exciting story, great for secondary age kids.
June 27, 2019
“It’s as though you are drowning in fear; it’s as though fear has filled you up right to the top of your throat and you have only one last breath to scream with.
So you scream.”
March 15, 2019
Complex and interesting story of a young girl and her nightmares. The first chapter had me terrified - I guess that was the point. Really interesting to read how the nightmare affected her life.
January 5, 2020
a strange but enjoyable short story. read it all in less than an hour
September 14, 2020
Short, tense, interesting.
October 26, 2020
I love the illustations in this. The beginning nightmare sequense was haunting, but the rest of the story was just fine.
October 24, 2021
A heart pounding read that keeps you guessing and has a satisfying ending.
May 18, 2023
This book made me feel like I wasn’t real .
May 19, 2023
the story wasn't great but i really, really enjoyed the art. i thought emma shoard did a wonderful job.
August 11, 2023
My best friend and I are still trying to dissect what the hell the black dog represents, and yet I think the fact we don't know makes the book all the more charming and unsettling.
December 21, 2023
3.5 ⭐️
March 7, 2024
Good!!! LIKE REALLY GOOD!!!! Short but POWERFUL!!!
July 19, 2024
It was a good metaphor for depression
January 11, 2025
3.5 stars
Gorgeous illustrations and a thought provoking quick read
Gorgeous illustrations and a thought provoking quick read
May 9, 2023
This is a really quick and easy young adult read. I love the haunting illustrations too and they complement the story well. Mal Peet's writing is an examination of fear and engaging with complicated emotions and is expertly done. Good Boy is a particularly great read for struggling readers or those with dyslexia because of its writing style. I would recommend it to young adults and adults alike though as an exploration of anxiety and fear.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews