Give the Dog a Bone - Hardcover

Steven Kellogg is the award-winning author and illustrator of over 100 children's books. His celebrated retellings of classic songs and stories include A Hunting We Will Go!, Johnny Appleseed, and The Three Pigs. He lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and upstate New York.

Kindergarten-Grade 3-Part counting book, part comic strip, and part geriatric adventure, this zany version of "This Old Man" is not for everyone. The first verse will sound familiar, but not much that follows. In the third verse, for example, an old man dons a cat costume, climbs a tree to avoid being caught by three Rhodesian Ridgebacks (Nick-nack-nick-Up the tree!"), makes friends with the dogs by offering them bones, and then goes "purring home." For five, an African-American man wearing sunglasses and sandals plays "nick-nack on the hive" and is chased away by angry bees, as five basset hounds look on. The mood changes with number six, when a nasty gentleman, wearing a sky-blue top hat and suit, demands that a hen hatch her six chicks, takes the birds away in a box, and refuses to share the bones stuffed in his pocket with six cairn terriers. Though he receives his comeuppance in the 10th verse when he is attacked by 10 vicious velociraptors, he survives and ends up making friends with all of the dogs, guaranteeing a happy ending. The artwork, done in colored ink, watercolor, acrylic, and colored pencil, is presented in a series of panels that keep the action moving quickly. There are plenty of details for careful observers, different characters that appear throughout, and lots of things to count (250 dogs). An unusual, imaginative flight of fancy that will appeal most to die-hard Kellogg fans.
Joy Fleishhacker, formerly at School Library Journal
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