DOGLAND is told through the eyes of Kit Nix, and as a child's view of the end of the old south, and the last battles against integration, it shows another side of America. It also reverses the image of the outsider - this is Florida the holiday resort before Disney got there; say, a little like holidaying in Spain before Generalissimo Franco took to his bed. Kit's father wants to run his theme park - where every variety of dog in the world can be seen - but he is a Northerner, a liberal, and an opponent of church teaching in schools. Luke Nix, according to the good ole boys in the neighbourhood, is asking for a stomping, and though things end in a mess, Luke avoids having the boot put in. His son is there at his side when it happens. His son has let out the dogs, who help to keep things under control.
According to the author's biography "Will Shetterly lived in Florida from the ages of four to seven, while his father and mother built and managed the real Dog Land". In his novel Shetterly has taken the space out - in some places time shoots by, and we get info dumps of what is happening in the world. Oddly, though, Kit's eye remains neutral - his father never persuades him to be liberal, to be atheistic, to be like Him. Even when the Klan come Kit never breaks down. His camera eye is almost that of an alien.
I have had problems with children's eye books. I read THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LITTLE TREE when it was forced on me, and then, when I learned it had been written pseudonymously by a white supremacist, wondered how LITTLE TREE proved the supremacy of the white race. And as a story of a liberal in the face of intolerance I had similar problems with DOGLAND. And then I started to think of DOGLAND as an allegory. Here in the backwoods there was no introduction to a magical kingdom. Kit eats burgers and fries everywhere and never comments on the sameness. His mother serves up burgers to visitors from around the world, who have just visited their exotic menagerie. The dog food is only a little different.
But then can a dog theme park be exotic, no matter how inclusive it is? Florida was being opened up to the rest of the USA, but it was being opened up to become unimaginative. Christopher sees this and makes no comment on it: in the country of the bland the one eyed man is king. It is better to have some sort of record than nothing at all.