Children's Book Review: The Stray Dog

At one point, I considered maintaining another blog just to review children's books. We read so many! But I decided against it because, well, you know I have sooooo much free time, and because there are sooooooooo many children's books I do not like and do not want to bother reading or checking out from the library. While I certainly do want my children to learn life lessons and grow in character, I don't really like story books that are written for that purpose - the exception being some classic fairy tales, which somehow transcend the preachy-ness and tell a great story while conveying a serious lesson at the same time. I also don't like most serious children's books. Snore...

But this little gem is not boring at all! And I don't just like it because it is short! My mom introduced me to The Stray Dog while I was teaching 1st grade. I always read the byline to my kids when we read stories, The Stray Dog by Marc Simont, is a very short, sweet little story about a family that finds a stray dog and decides to adopt him.

I LOVE how so much of this book is told in pictures. I usually like best the books where the author is also the illustrator (like David Shannon). The very front of the book (before the title page) opens up to a picture of a dirty little dog eating garbage. The title page shows a girl and her little brother looking wistfully at a field of people playing with their dogs, so right from the beginning it sets up these two beings that just need each other.

A side benefit of this book is that it helped both of my kids understand a little bit about ownership. The family at first doesn't take Willy home because "he might belong to someone", and when Willy is almost taken by the dog catcher, the children claim him saying, "he belongs to us!" I was able to tell both kids as new "getting-into-everything-ers", "That does not belong to you" and I think it was because of this book that they understood that it was off limits. At any rate, they usually would put it down.

So if you like dogs, even a little bit, you will probably like this story, and if you are pregnant, it will probably make you cry.