Dream Dog

K-Gr 2—Having a severely allergic father means that Harry's dreams of owning a dog are going nowhere, so he snaps on his X-35 Infra-Rocket Imagination Helmet and produces a furry imaginary friend he names Waffle. The pair is inseparable and, like most imaginary friends, is accepted by the adults and regarded skeptically by playmates. When his dad changes jobs, moving from a pepper factory to one that makes Ping-Pong balls, his allergies disappear, and he buys Harry a live dog, Bumper, as a birthday surprise. When the real dog can't see the imaginary pooch, Harry places him under the helmet for a few minutes and the three friends happily cavort out the door. At the end of their play and the book, the dream dog leaps up into the sky and out of the story while Harry bonds with his new pet. Catrow's signature loose-limbed, full-color gouache, pencil-and-ink art sprawls across the pages with detailed exaggeration. The story includes threads about Harry's father's jobs, the boy's first lizard pet, his friend Mathilda, and many adventures with his dream dog. The length of this tale, the fairly complex plot, and text that meanders leisurely suggests a school-age audience. However, Harry looks and often acts like a preschooler, which could make determining the right audience for the book difficult. Still, libraries looking for stories to help ease older children away from imaginary friends may want to consider this title.—Marge Loch-Wouters, La Crosse Public Library, WI