There Once Was a Dog

PreS-Gr 1—A child of unspecified gender asks his or her father to tell a story. Neither character is ever pictured, and the child is only referred to as "the little kid." When the father starts to tell a story about an animal, the youngster cuts him off by saying, "Not the alligator. Oh no! I want the dog story instead," to which the father replies, "I'm afraid I don't know that one" and begins a new story about another animal, only to be interrupted by the child, who says, "'Oh no! I want the dog story instead.'" This cycle repeats 15 times, until the father tells a story of a dog that was friends with the previously mentioned animals. The punch line to this tedious tale is that "what the little kid liked most of all was to count to three and say… 'Go on, Daddy! Tell me again!'" This non-plot of a story is accompanied by disjointed-looking animals with bugged-out eyes that are not at all endearing. Deborah Freedman's The Story of Fish and Snail (Viking, 2013) and Philip C. Stead's Bear Has a Story to Tell (Roaring Brook, 2012) are much more imaginative and better illustrated than this exasperating exercise.—Martha Simpson, Stratford Library Association, CT