Gowanus Dogs

A first-time author and artist springs powerfully onto the picture book scene with this visually arresting tale of a homeless man who finds love and redemption caring for a feral puppy. Beginning with a scene of a pile of pups inside the darkened whorl of an abandoned cement mixer, Frost thrusts readers into the stimulating world of a mother dog and her three offspring. Sweeping black-and-white vistas invoke the chilly winter cityscape of their gritty urban environs near Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal. As the canine family searches for food, Frost introduces the supporting cast, all of whom play a role in this understated drama: a homeless man, a bridge worker, an oil boat crewman and Maggie, a waitress at the Blue Moon Diner. When the homeless man uses what little money he has to buy the dogs food, he sets off a chain of events that eventually finds him work and an apartment as well as homes for the three pups. Frost's narrative moves as smoothly as the ships down the Gowanus Canal, and his accomplished drawings of life on the riverway build like film frames to a climactic finish, with homeless man and pup curled up together under a roof of their own. With brief exchanges between characters--in both words (the boat crewman says ""Welcome aboard"" to the pup he later names ""Captain"") and pictures (in one spread, Frost subtly conveys a bond between the drawbridge operator and the pup he would adopt as ""Inspector"")--he creates, within his big-city setting, the intimacy of a closely knit community. Ages 5-up. (Apr.)