Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Voyage of the Dogs
    Voyage of the Dogs
    Voyage of the Dogs
    Audiobook4 hours

    Voyage of the Dogs

    Written by Greg van Eekhout

    Narrated by Patrick Lawlor

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Dogs in space! Share this book with middle graders who enjoy stories about dogs, space adventures, or action adventure stories—or all three!

    Lopside is a Barkonaut, a specially trained dog who assists human astronauts on missions in space. He and the crew aboard the spaceship Laika are en route to set up an outpost on a distant planet.

    When the mission takes a disastrous turn, the Barkonauts on board suddenly find themselves completely alone on their severely damaged ship.

    Survival seems impossible. But these dogs are Barkonauts—and Barkonauts always complete their mission.

    SOS. Ship damaged. Human crew missing.
    We are the dogs. We are alone.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 4, 2018
    ISBN9780062888181
    Author

    Greg van Eekhout

    Greg van Eekhout lives in San Diego, California, with his astronomy/physics professor wife and two dogs. He’s worked as an educational software developer, ice-cream scooper, part-time college instructor, and telemarketer. Being a writer is the only job he’s ever actually liked. You can find more about Greg at his website: writingandsnacks.com.

    More audiobooks from Greg Van Eekhout

    Related to Voyage of the Dogs

    Related audiobooks

    Children's Animals For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Hailstone Numbers

      Nov 1, 2021

      Hailstone Numbers
      2 min read

    • Article

      Caitlin Colleary

      Nov 1, 2021

      Caitlin Colleary
      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesdays

      Jan 1, 2022

      Tuesdays
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Book Eaters

      Aug 10, 2022

      The Book Eaters
      1 min read

    • Article

      Space Jam-packed

      Nov 14, 2021

      Space Jam-packed
      1 min read

    • Article

      What Was It About Animorphs?

      Jan 23, 2019

      What Was It About Animorphs?
      7 min read

    • Article

      Happy & Grumpy Take a train

      May 8, 2020

      Happy & Grumpy Take a train
      1 min read

    • Article

      Prying Apart Colors

      Nov 1, 2021

      Prying Apart Colors
      3 min read

    • Article

      Matthias And The Dragons

      Sep 1, 2021

      Matthias And The Dragons
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Fate Of The House

      Jun 6, 2018

      Today, the house on the hill wrestles for air. Pile upon piles of tree branches, bark and dry leaves clutter the driveway. At night it is dark, a ghost house. It wasn’t always like that. Squeezed between coloured Sydenham and Sparks Estate to the eas

      3 min read

    • Article

      Muse News

      Nov 1, 2022

      Muse News
      3 min read

    • Article

      79 christmas Build Ideas

      Nov 30, 2023

      79 christmas Build Ideas
      9 min read

    • Article

      Whoa! How Embarrassing!

      Aug 8, 2019

      It was my school’s sports car nival day and I was about to run the r elay race. I was standing at the start line waiting for the race to begin and I was daydr eaming. I thought I hear d the starter so I started sprinting as fast as I could. Suddenly

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Secret Blocks Of Minecraft

      Sep 7, 2023

      The Secret Blocks Of Minecraft
      5 min read

    • Article

      Rats Aweigh

      Jul 24, 2019

      Rats Aweigh
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Secret of My Success

      Apr 1, 2020

      The Secret of My Success
      2 min read

    • Article

      Truly, A Whole World Of Wonder

      Mar 11, 2023

      So you think you have troubles? We humans have it easy. We are surviving and thriving as a species to the point that we are destroying the only home we have. Our impact on Earth is becoming better understood and documented. The number of people who r

      2 min read

    • Article

      Who Are You Calling Prickly?

      Sep 13, 2023

      Who Are You Calling Prickly?
      6 min read

    • Article

      Landlord of The wild

      May 2, 2024

      Landlord of The wild
      8 min read

    • Article

      This Issue

      Dec 22, 2021

      This Issue
      2 min read

    • Article

      How We Really Tamed the Dog

      Jul 13, 2017

      Suppose you wanted to build the perfect dog from scratch. What would be the key ingredients in the recipe? Loyalty and smarts would be musts. Cuteness would be as well, perhaps with gentle eyes, and a curly, bushy tail that wags in joy in anticipatio

      23 min read

    • Article

      Go WILD!

      Apr 6, 2023

      Go WILD!
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Voyage of the Dogs

    4/5

    17 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I need to get over bad or incomplete science in books for middle graders. I mean, this was a good, solid space adventure starring dogs for goodness' sake and all I'm worrying about is who tested all the flora and fauna on Stepping Stone to ensure they were safe to eat. Like, seriously, the stuff on Stepping Stone was maybe 10% of the book and I'm letting it ruin my enjoyment of the whole book. Suspension of disbelief, woman. Suspension. Of. Disbelief.

      Sigh. My problem, not the book's.

      But can we talk about the dead astronauts..?
    • 4/5
      I'll just say this up front, because I'm one of the people for whom this is important: No dogs die in this book. We do get the story of Laika*, told by one of the dogs to the others so that, at a critical point, they can make an informed choice, but Greg Van Eekhout kills none of his fictional dogs in the course of this story.

      Lopside, Bug, Daisy, and their pack leader, Golden retriever Champion, are Barkonauts, dogs specially trained and equipped to be part of the crew of Laika, the first Earth ship to head out to start a colony on an alien world in a distant solar system. There are four human crew as well, and we only meet two of them before one, Roro, helps the dogs into hibernation for the FTL portion of their travels.

      When the dogs wake up, the humans are gone, having taken the lifepod, and the ship is badly damaged.

      They're on the outskirts of their destination star system, but with with the ship's drives not working, too far from their destination planet, Stepping Stone. The dogs struggle to make repairs. They manage to redirect the communication antenna, and send a call for help to Earth.

      They are good dogs, and they are Barkonauts. Barkonauts complete their missions, and their mission is to get to Stepping Stone.

      There are real personalities at work. There is both conflict and cooperation among the dogs. Lopside, a little terrier mix, the only non-purebred, is our viewpoint character. From time to time he reminds us that unlike the others, he wasn't bred to please everyone. (Champion's a Golden, Bug is a Corgi, Daisy a Great Dane puppy. All bred to work with people, not to consider people's opinions and then make their own decisions.)

      Looming over their efforts is the name of the ship, Laika. They know Laika was the first dog in space, the very first Barkonaut, but for some reason, her story is missing from The Great Book of Dogs, the book Roro read to them, full of the stories of heroic dogs. Lopside really wants to know that story. He's sure it would help inspire them to even greater heroism and ingenuity.

      But with or without the story of Laika, these dogs love their people and their jobs, and are determined to succeed They don't quit. They don't fail.

      This is a very satisfying story.

      Recommended.

      I bought this book.

      *Considering how long it's been, and how much younger than me are the people raising young children today, I think I have to say outright what Laika's story is. She was the first dog in space, yes. She went up in Sputnik 2, on November 3, 1957. There was never a plan to bring her back, but she died within hours, when a malfunction caused the Sputnik cabin to overheat. This was the result of the Soviet space program taking barely four weeks to design Sputnik 2, and that wasn't enough time to make a reliable temperature control system for Laika. Laika's story is one of humans behaving badly. Greg Van Eekhout, on the other hand, is a good human, who gets well-deserved cuddles from his dogs.