Give a Dog a Bone

Lush color and continual surprises in paintings by England's Kate Greenaway Medalist grace the story of a stray mutt, avid for a bone to crunch. Split pages invite kids to make a game of discovering how the dog snatches then loses bone after bone as he frisks through the streets of a medieval community. Wildsmith's sly inventions pile on extra giggles: the pictures include a modern street sweeper that swallows one bone, a tractor that flattens another and more jokey anachronisms in the ancient setting. Then there is the museum where a dinosaur skeleton falls on the stray when he tries to steal its leg. The curious cat who races after the homeless canine to observe the quest is another comic touch. All this japery is crowned by the finale in which the dog is a stray no longer, assured of amassing as many bones as he can gnaw. (48)