Author: DC Swain
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WARTY!
Today is spotty day! I review two books by two authors, and I'm afraid I didn't find either of them worthy!
I try to lower the bar with children's books - not in quality, but in what I'm willing let writers get away with. Even so, there is a limit to trying to be generous and understanding, and to support new authors. I like children's books to look like they're offering something - preferably something educational or at least a lot of fun. I can't claim any of that for this very short book which is indifferently illustrated. Children are precious and they deserve the very best we can give them whether it be attention, education, love, or books, and when I feel that they're being short-changed, I have to rebel against it!
The first problem was the complete disconnect between the book title and the book content! This was not a story about how Oakley lost his spots! It's about what he did when he realized they were missing. His spots never were actually lost: he never had them to begin with! Oakley is a Dalmatian. I don't think there's anyone who doesn't know what a Dalmatian looks like, but in Oakley's case, he's spotless - literally. He's all white without a hint of the usually patterning. It's not that the design effort was spotty - it's that there aren't any spots at all, unlike the rest of his kin.
Dalmatians, named after an historical region in Croatia, are actually born white and their spots appear around three weeks of age - a bit earlier than Oakley evidently gets his. They can be black or russet. These dogs, like all so-called pure-bred dogs, all-too-often have health problems. In the case of Dalmatians, it's Hyperuricemia, and they need a specially-controlled diet to avoid debilitating problems. About 30% of Dalmatians also suffer deafness, something the idiot breeders didn't realize to begin with - they just thought the dogs were stupid. Human arrogance strikes again! My advice is to get thee to a muttery and adopt something with a good mixed gene pool!
But I digress! There are so many ways this story could have gone from here. It's a crying shame that it went to the dogs. It could have turned out, for example, that Oakley's spots were actually there all along - but they were white! That would have been a riot and quite inventive. It could have turned out that they got stuck on something he'd rolled around in. He could have just dropped them while out playing, or shaken them off after a swim, which could have led to a treasure hunt for his own spots! He could have earned his spots like medals for some heroic act. None of this happens.
There is a token attempt, on one page, to address where I had been thinking this story would go: that of the misfit child, but after a brief mention on one page, it's forgotten. What a wasted opportunity! This book could have been aimed at helping children to fit in, and helping them to understand that they can help others with this, but that disintegrated. Another avenue: that of using this to talk about racism, failed to get unleashed.
Instead, all we got was some whining, three pages of Oakley looking in oddball places for his spots, like he'd lost them - which he hadn't and which doesn't speak well of his smarts (or his persistence for that matter). There are some pages where he tries to fake his spots, but he soon gives up and goes to bed. Magically, in the morning, the spots have appeared. I'm sorry. I know that this was someone's bright idea and effort, and I wish them all the best in their future efforts, but this was just barking up the wrong tree in my opinion, and while I can't claim it got my hackles up, I did feel rather dog-eared afterwards.
