This winning picture book trumpets the merits of hard work and loyalty.
Teresa Bateman (Keeper of Soles) unspools her tale with a storyteller's command of language and pacing: "An old farm dog plodded down a dirt road--paws sore and stomach empty." The pooch marches right up to a farmer and asks, "Do you need a dog?" The farmer declines: "Dogs just eat and don't give anything back," unlike cows, horses and chickens. "Do you have an opening for a cow?" asks the dog. Chris Sheban's (Catching the Moon) watercolor, graphite and colored pencil illustrations depict a modest yet thriving farm. The dog returns before dawn, herds the cows into place, and the farmer does his milking "in jig time." Even so, the man tells the dog there's no job for him at the farm. In what becomes a can-do refrain, Bateman writes, "The dog was disappointed but not discouraged." The pup does the same with the horses (leading them along with the promise of carrots) and the farmer again turns him away ("the dog was disappointed but not discouraged"). Three's the charm when the dog tries to fill an opening for a chicken. Sheban takes the perspective of the fowls, looking out from inside the dark coop into the light-filled farmyard where the furry fellow stands (he tidies up the coop and chases out a fox). At last, the farmer finds just the right job for his canine applicant.
This pooch is a model of the power of persistence. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness