DO YOU HAVE A DOG? by Eileen Spinelli

DO YOU HAVE A DOG?

by , illustrated by
Age Range: 4 - 8
Email this review

KIRKUS REVIEW

A hodgepodge roundup of celebrity canines.

This is a rather meager offering from Spinelli, nor has Valério’s artwork much character, though it is decidedly high spirited and gay. Readers are engaged very briefly about whether or not they have a dog—“Do you have a dog?... Does a dog have you?”—but the meat and potatoes of the book are dogs of the famous. And by far the most interesting material is found in the end papers, where Spinelli has introduced the 11 historical figures with their dogs. It is the pages in between that are often less than beguiling. “Iggy—who kept Byrd warm, / a comfort in Antarctic storm. / Through blizzard, ice, and wild weather / the two holed up, good friends together.” And of Agatha Christie’s dog Peter, readers learn, “He on the rug and she in the chair— / they made a rather cozy pair.” The poems are too bland for these couples, who should have set off some sparks of clever allusion or strange factoid. As the poems are quatrains—plus introductory and closing refrain—you really have to use all the few words you’ve got, and here Spinelli doesn't.

Despite inherently child-friendly subject matter, a nonstarter. (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5387-5
Page count: 26pp
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online:
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15th, 2011




MORE BY EILEEN SPINELLI

ChildrenTHANKFUL by Eileen Spinelli
by Eileen Spinelli
ChildrenANOTHER DAY AS EMILY by Eileen Spinelli
by Eileen Spinelli
ChildrenWHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING by Eileen Spinelli
by Eileen Spinelli
ChildrenCOLD SNAP by Eileen Spinelli
by Eileen Spinelli

MORE BY GERALDO VALÉRIO

ChildrenHALF-PINT PETE THE PIRATE by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen
by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen
ChildrenDO YOU HAVE A CAT? by Eileen Spinelli
by Eileen Spinelli

SIMILAR BOOKS SUGGESTED BY OUR CRITICS:

ChildrenTHE ADVENTURES OF POLO by Régis Faller
by Régis Faller
ChildrenCHESTER by Ayano Imai
by Ayano Imai
ChildrenSTANLEY AT SEA by Linda Bailey
by Linda Bailey
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/eileen-spinelli/do-you-have-dog/
www.kirkusreviews.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-30
108419
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:UCLRBLP6ZODPHLBSQUGAOYBGKI5JIRP4
<urn:uuid:37883eaf-bff6-4b22-a076-cb45b2985655>
2016-07-31T01:45:57Z
23.21.151.31
sha1:L3R53KCOZQNLQ3HHY5UO3HF7Y6QMVZYI
<urn:uuid:f6ced406-0fcc-4cfd-af86-b0290f245f2f>
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/eileen-spinelli/do-you-have-dog/
length
response
<urn:uuid:9226db24-ead5-477d-8a3a-880ac01a424f>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-185-27-174.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-30
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for July 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf