The Little Toy Dog

I read The Little Toy Dog this past weekend. It’s the true story of the two surviving crewmembers of a reconnaissance plane that was shot down in the Barents Sea who were imprisoned by the Soviets from July 1960 to January 1961.

I liked the book very much. My favorite part, strangely enough, is from the Preface, where the author talks about the publisher “graciously accepting [the book’s] title against his seasoned judgment,” going on to say:

Anyone in the book trade will realize why he warned us, for our colorless, understated title utterly ignores both the excitement of the shoot-down and the high drama in the interrogations, refers to an utterly unimportant episode in the book, and is meaningless to anyone who has not finished it.

I wonder, though, if the book might not have gotten more notice if the author could have at least settled on a concise subtitle. Instead, there is one subtitle (or no subtitle, but a longer description instead) on the dust jacket, a different subtitle on the half title (which is not supposed to have a subtitle at all), and yet another subtitle on the title page.

And, besides, I wouldn’t call the figurine a little toy dog, anyway. I’d call it a little plastic (or rubber?) dog—or I’d call it a little Snoopy dog. Maybe the publisher couldn’t get permission from Charles Schultz to call it a little Snoopy dog—or maybe Michelle Marie Palm never called it that.