Dog's Colorful Day: A Messy Story about Colors and Counting

The hero of this pleasant concept book is a plump sausage of a canine: ""As you can see, Dog is white with one black spot on his left ear."" But by the end of the day, he has turned into a veritable canvas of 10 colorful spots, nine of which have nothing to do with genetics. ""Dog follows a little boy with chocolate,"" writes Dodd (What Does It Look Like?), after Dog has accumulated three other spots of, respectively, red jam, blue paint and grass stain. ""The boy gives Dog a chocolaty pat--but no chocolate. Now Dog has five spots."" After a recap of all the pooch's spots, and a bath by Dog's owner (who accidentally added the 10th spot of purple marker), Dog returns to his natural look, with that one original spot, cuddled contentedly in his basket and dreaming of multicolored bones. Dog's zaftig physique and wide-eyed good humor are doggone charming, while the combinations of thick, scraggly black outlines and dense swathes of digitally applied candy-color make every encounter with a new spot pop off the page. Ages 2-5. (Mar.)