Author: Debbie Dunlap
Publisher: Dunlap & Dunlap
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.
Illustrated by Monica Delgado and Lara Agulto.
I applaud Debbie Dunlap for this refreshing and useful children's book - and that's not because she's a fellow Texas resident! No, honest, it isn't! Not only was it multicultural, and the story both a very positive and a truly functional one, but she was quite obviously inspired to have chosen such innovative artists to illustrate it, too.
If I had a complaint it was with the technical difficulty in reading it on Adobe Reader - the book was too big for it to handle! Maybe that's a positive thing?! The text was out of alignment with the page illustrations, and seemed to be sliding off to the right like it was trying to get away from the dog - but the dog was perfectly sweet, so I don't know what the text's problem was.... What's that lyric to Common People? "...watch your life slide out of view"?!
Seriously, I could not read the last word or two in some sentences. I'm guessing this was simply an issue with the format and the final version will be much-improved. Maybe it would be better on an iPad or some other tablet, but to be truly safe - go with ye olde tyme printe booke and really enjoy the excellent texture. Sometimes technology has a lot further to go than we think it has, huh? I blame Microsoft whether they deserve it or not!
That minor quibble aside, the story was remarkable. A dog, missing his friend when she goes off to school for the day, decides to try to find her, and ends up in a hospital where the resident kids find him a fun companion for the day, and he's reunited with his pet human after all, so that's perfect.
I loved that this felt natural - like it might happen (hey maybe!) and that everyone was included. It felt warm and normal, and right, and you can't ask for better than that. No, really, you can't!
So the story alone would have been inspirational and thought-provoking for any child, but the artwork took it to another level. It has a curious 3D quality to it, but not in the way we've come to think of 3D today. It looked like Lara Agulto and Monica Delgado (they put the O! in artwork) modeled the characters from clay and then photographed them against construction-paper cut-outs for backgrounds. This is something children (with appropriate supervision!) could do themselves. They could copy the illustrations from the book in the same way and emulate this very story. How cool is that? (For the calorific-ally-challenged, that's very cool!).
But I ramble interminably. It was that good. Fresh and inventive. I would have loved this as a kid to the point where it rapidly became more dog-eared than the actual dog (whose photograph is included in the book!) and so worn-out that we would have needed a new one in short-order! So yes, of course I recommend it!.
