Book Review: My Dog Skip

My Dog Skip
By Willie Morris
Random House Publishers, 1995,118 pages
ISBN: 0679-76722-3

A boy, his dog, and childhood memories of growing up in a Mississippi Delta town are what the late Willie Morris shares with us in My Dog Skip.

A recollection of his [Morris’s] bonding relationship with Skip (a Fox Terrier), he delightfully describes their adventurous antics. Supported by a cast of childhood characters, he reminisces about the love, loyalty, and camaraderie with his canine companion from puppy hood to their ultimate parting.

Set in his childhood town of Yazoo City on the Mississippi Delta, Morris takes us back to a simpler era of America (1943-1952), before the rise and influence of modern technology (television, computers, and cell phones) which lends the reader to recall or experience, depending on your age, the sense of a more laid back down home easiness that is generally associated with the rural deep south.

Written in a clean, emotionally felt style which holds the reader like a lazy summer day on the Delta from cover to cover, this book is for all pet lovers and those with a special bond, like me, to their "best friend." A must read for your bookshelf.

Willie Morris died in 1999 and was considered one of Mississippi’s best contemporary authors.