Friday, September 16, 2005

Lucky


One more book from the Kane/Miller box--Gus Clarke's Lucky.

Our narrator is a cute brown dog, named Lucky (seen to your right), who one day ends up at an animal shelter. Lucky doesn't know why he's in the shelter, but right away begins matchmaking animals to owners. He makes friends with all the other dogs and strategizes with them to get one particularly hard-to-place dog adopted. Lucky and his friends all make frightful faces and behave inappropriately so their friend will be easily the most appealing dog. (My four-year-old particularly liked these pages.)

Lucky watches as his friends are taken to real homes one by one and wonders if he too will find a new human friend. I hope it's not a spoiler when I tell you he does find a new human in the end.

Lucky is a true charmer. The dogs are chosen by people who look just like them and Clarke's illustrations are charming. This book is a great read-aloud, especially if you point out how much the dogs resemble their new human companions.

An great read for the 3-6 crowd.