Heavenly Hound

By : Annette Bach

Hanne Kvist broke onto the children’s books scene two years ago with Drengen med sølvhjelmen (The Boy with the Silver Helmet), the story of a heroic boy’s fight for his sister and for the right to be different.

Hound in Heaven tells the story of Lora, an orphan who has to give up her faithful companion, her dog Hound, on her arrival at a children’s home run by nuns. In her grief and despair she shuts herself off from the other girls at the home, but outside the wall she meets Nick, a boy from a large and very hard-up family. He sympathizes with Lora in her grief and helps her to build a memorial for Hound, in case he should ever rise again, like that guy Jesus. Lora thinks it is unlikely, but at least she has found a friend. A friend who is good at studying caterpillars and would throw a birthday party for you, even though you don’t know when your birthday is. But since Lora knows only too well that you can only have a birthday party on your actual birthday, and since only one of the other girls can afford to buy the one thing she wants most in the world after Hound, a little pair of brass scissors, and when Hound isn’t there, well, then she might as well behave like a naughty, obstreperous dog herself. And so she does.
   Wrapped up in her grief and loneliness Lora runs away, like a dog, and lives like a dog and lays down to die like a dog on Hound’s memorial. But this is where a friend like Nick has to step in, and it is his concern for her that saves her, making it possible for her to celebrate her birthday and return to the home. And on Hound’s memorial ground it looks like Hound may indeed have come back to life, At any rate a dog does show up there every day, a dog which the sisters allow her to keep. Not only that, she even receives a present: a little pair of brass scissors. So life really couldn’t be much better!
   Hound in Heaven is a touching, modern-day fairy-tale, recounted in Hanne Kvist’s quite unique voice, which brings to life these small knights in shining armour who know how to fight the good fight.

This article was published in Danish Children’s Literature no 19

Translated by Barbara Haveland