Teddy the Dog: (Almost) Best in
Show. By Keri Claiborne Boyle. Pictures by Jonathan Sneider. Harper.
$17.99.
Raisin, the Littlest Cow. By
Miriam Busch. Illustrated by Larry Day. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $17.99.
The kids who will read and
love these books know all too well what it is like to have a personality that
is bigger than one’s physical size. Super-self-confident Teddy the dog has an
outsize view of himself and his abilities, and that is just great when he zips
through the park on roller blades (wearing a helmet along with his trademark celebrity-style
sunglasses), or takes a bubble bath with two rubber ducks and four soothing
candles. When it comes to a formal dog show, though – well, Teddy is going to
learn a little something about himself. But only a little! Keri Claiborne Boyle
keeps this particular voyage of sort-of-self-discovery light throughout, as
Teddy is forced to get to the show in an all-cats bus called the “ChauFUR
Express” and then immediately starts showing the other contestants all the
wrong things to do. Teddy himself – as the pictures by Jonathan Sneider make
abundantly clear – is blissfully unaware that there is anything wrong with
raiding the judges’ refrigerator and chewing up a fellow contestant’s books.
Teddy doesn’t really “get” the dog show, being unwilling to jump “when there’s
no food to steal off a counter,” and asking “who would want to sit and stay
when you can jump and run?” Good questions, those – but the wrong ones to ask
during a competition. “I have standards!” Teddy insists. But so do dog shows,
and Teddy eventually realizes that he “just wasn’t cut out for the show life
after all.” A trip home, again on the “ChauFUR Express,” gives Teddy time to
realize that “we’re all best in our
own show,” and that is an apt message for perhaps over-enthusiastic young
humans as well.
Of course, not all young
people – or the book characters representing them – have personalities bigger
than their bodies. Some are just fine being small, such as Raisin, the Littlest Cow. Raisin is “perfectly content” to be tiny,
to be doted on by the larger cows, and to make lists of things she likes
(movies, the color brown, sprinklers) and ones she does not like (cauliflower,
tomato juice, thunder). One thing Raisin does not like is change: “But change
came, as change does,” writes Miriam Busch, and Larry Day shows the big brown
cows (remember that Raisin likes that color) rushing away from Raisin (who is
black and white) to see Raisin’s mother’s new baby, “who was even smaller than
Raisin.” Uh-oh. This happens on a Thursday, and Raisin stomps off and adds
Thursdays to the list of things she does not like. And she makes a new list, this one of “places to run
away to.” Raisin looks adorable even when she scowls, which is a good thing,
since her new baby brother makes her scowl all the time. Invited to name the
baby, Raisin – who has already said he looks like a cauliflower – suggests
“Thursday,” and then comments, “Thursday smells funny.” Clearly a first-class
snit is in progress, driven by sibling rivalry. And as Raisin gets ready to run
off (to Jupiter, no less), things get worse: she tries to climb onto buckets to
be able to see over a fence and watch a movie at a nearby drive-in theater, but
it starts to rain, and then there is thunder, and soon Raisin is running to her
mother, all muddy and upset, only to find that the new baby is crying loudly at
all the noise – and has eyes that are Raisin’s favorite color, brown. Sure
enough, Raisin and the baby bond over their mutual dislike of the noise of the
storm, and soon the baby is cooing at Raisin, and Raisin comes up with the
perfect baby name: Raindrop. And all ends happily and amusingly, the lesson in
this case being that even if it’s great to be small, it’s also great to be a
big sibling. And to plan to visit Jupiter with
the baby instead of running away there on one’s own.
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