Scout's Heaven

Often, our first brush with death is with the loss of a pet. This story touches on the emptiness, the concern and the confusion that the passing causes, but the illustrations, though simple, enhance the impact tremendously. On the rainy night that Scout takes her final breath, the shadow is so

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large and so dark that we are aware of almost nothing else. As the story unfolds, the shadow gradually shrinks and eventually the area around the shadow starts to fill with line drawings representing memories of the things that Scout did—memories of her life. She is no longer in “two places”, rather her heaven lies in the hearts of the people who loved her. This story handles an incredibly sad subject sweetly without a sugar coating.

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I'm not a parent -- of human kids, anyway -- but I've been around dogs nearly my entire life, and I've read a great many dog books for adults. The last chapters of those books are virtually guaranteed to choke me up, and so I opened my copy of "Scout's Heaven" with more than a little trepidation,

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knowing that I held a children's book about the death of a beloved family pet. Of course I was misty-eyed in a matter of minutes ... and honestly, I'd worry a little about anyone who wasn't.

The book is a short read for an adult -- ten minutes or so -- but feels very well-suited to be read aloud to a youngster. The difficult subject is handled in a straightforward but gentle way, and the subtle, ethereal line art surrounding the text feels just right for the story. The ending will leave both adult and child with a feeling of warmth to replace the emptiness, which is exactly the purpose of a little book like this.

In short, the book is heartbreaking ... but it's also really, really lovely. I'm very glad I read it.

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I read this book to my young niece who loved it. Her family recently lost their cat of 18 years. She looked at me when I finished reading and said “so to you think Fluffy is in heaven?” I told her probably so. She seemed satisfied with that answer.
A very simple story of what happens after a

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family pet dies. I recommend this book.

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Scout's Heaven is a short sweet story about a family whose dog passes away. Little brother asks many of the questions any young reader might ask when their pet dies to which his family answers mostly "we don't know, maybe we will know tomorrow". Tomorrow comes, questions aren't answered. I suspect

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a child would find this ending unsatisfactory.

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This just didn't appeal to me. The illustrations were not my style. The conclusion was kind of a vague spiritual thing, but not really an answer, though maybe that was the point. A little boy asks many questions of where his dog is and what she can do after she dies. Finally they hear barking

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coming from the heavens. I liked it more the second time I read it, but it's not a resource that I would recommend as a veterinarian.

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Scout, the family's pet dog, has taken her last breath. Little brother wants to know where she has gone. He is told that she has gone to heaven--but for little brother he wants to know where is heaven and what will Scout find there. The book takes on that journey of losing pet. I found this book a

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little less comforting than some of the same genre. Most of the adults of the book seem to be a little too unsure to provide real comfort. The other difficulty I found with the book Was that the print was so light against the dark background it was difficult to read. 2 1/2 stars out of 5 stars.

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Weird. It read like something was lost in the translation. I received that shorty after my dog "Scout" passed. I was too emotional to read it then so I held onto it. I read it last night and was lost at how this would help with grief. Scout was a female, which threw it off right away for me, here

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is is a male's name. Then the weird burial. I really disliked this book and would never give it to a child to read for comfort. The illustrations, weird and dark.

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