Picture Books for a dog lover

Pretty much from the point my daughter could talk she has wanted a dog. That wish did eventually come true, but as of when this post was written, it had not come true yet. However, she could vicariously have a dog through reading dog books, and when my boys letter of the week for Kindergarten was DOG, I knew this was my chance! Thus was born the dog booklist, which I’ll be adding to my ultimate list of booklists

If you go according to this picture: Scooby-Doo comics………  And that statement makes a lot more sense now that I’ve added in the picture.

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 Our original dog booklist

Hi, this is Future Ticia 2020, and I’m updating this dog booklist to actually link to stuff, and generally make this post useful to people. With that in mind, these are the original dog books we checked out.

• Market Square Dog– We all loved this one and were on pins and needles waiting to see what happened.  This was a good reminder to me that I really should make sure I know what’s going to happen in the end, because for a minute it looked like the dog was going to die, but it all ended up good in the end.  So, this is another book by James Herriot about a dog that was wandering down Market Street and how he ended up finding a home.  Big hit here. Sadly out of print now, but it was collected into a treasury of his books as James Herriot’s Treasury.
• Pinkerton Behave and A Rose for Pinkerton– both of these are by Stephen Kellogg and are very cute.  The words aren’t that complex but part of the fun is looking at the pictures and seeing how much the words enhance the story.  The kids had a lot of fun with both of these pointing out what is silly and the different details of the pictures.
• Dear Mrs. LaRue– this is really aimed at older kids.  It’s a super cute book, and I loved reading to my kids in elementary school when I was teaching, but it went way over my kids heads.  They weren’t getting the difference between what the dog was writing to his owner and imagining and what was really happening.  I’m sure I’ll try this one again in a few years.
• Invisible inc and the Missing Dog– This is a beginner chapter book and probably could have been read all in one sitting fairly easily, but I was also wanting to see how well they did at remembering what happened earlier in the book when it’d been a while since we read.  All in all a fun read, and I’m thinking of finding other books in this series. (Sadly no longer seems to be at the library)
• Clifford and the Spring Clean Up– I think this is one of my least favorite Clifford books and I’m not really sure why.  I think it’s partially because I recognize elements of a Clifford episode in this, but the episode did the story better.  This is one of the older books where it’s more capsules of different things and no real story.  So Clifford tries to shake out the rug, and breaks it.  Then Clifford tries to lay on the couch and breaks it.  You could almost read these bits out of order and it would make no difference to the story.  Frustrating to me.  But, the kids like it.
• Carl Goes Shopping– I think we were all vaguely indifferent to this one.  I didn’t glance through it before checking it out, and it’s a wordless book.  But, we did have fun looking at the pictures and talking about what Carl is doing.  I suppose if I’d wanted to I could have made this into a chance to tell me a story, but it was bedtime and I was trying to get them calmed down…..

That’s what we read originally on our dog booklist, but here is my updated version that includes both fiction and nonfiction, and a bit of a variety.  All of these were found at our local library.

Updated dog booklist

I’m quite amused by this dog booklist.

• Wet dog!– This is a great story for repetition and word choice, and has great illustrations about a poor hot dog who just wants to cool off.
• Good dog, Carl!– While we weren’t fans of the books, from what I’m reading it’s a popular classic series, AND I like wordless books for a beginning writing exercise
• Small Brown Dog’s Bad Remembering Day– A fun book with a silly dog who can’t find his collar and can’t remember his name. It’s a great cumulative book, perfect for getting kids to start predicting what will happen next.
• Dog Gone: Starring Otis– follows a dog left at a boarding home while his owner goes on vacation and how he desperately tries to find her, but gets lost and returns to his boarding school. It’s a cute story and worth checking out.
• The Dog Who Cried Wolf– A dog reads about wolves and wants to be one, until she finds out the grass isn’t always greener on the other side
• Dog Breath: the horrible trouble with Hally Tosis- Super cute story of a dog with bad breath and how it saves his family
• The Stray Dog– I got this book when I was teaching, and it’s an adorable story of a stray dog who finds his own home
• Dear Mrs. LaRue– I love this book and love to use it with a letter-writing unit for slightly older books
• My Dog Toby– the many travails as a young girl tries to train her dog to do one trick
• Harry the Dirty Dog– This is a classic, and I love the turn around when Harry realizes maybe he’s wrong to hate baths so much
• The Old Dog– Prepare to cry if you read this book, but it’s a good book to talk about dealing with a pet’s death
• The Great Smelly, Slobbery, Small-Tooth Dog: a folktale from Great Britain– This is an interesting beastly spouse tale (similar to Beauty and the Beast)
• The Dog that Dug for Dinosaurs: a true story– Interesting true story about one of the early fossil hunters and her dog
• Life cycle of a dog– There are several books like this, and my library probably had a half dozen like this, but this is the one I happened to pick up and liked
• A Dog Came Too: a true story– an interesting story of exploring North America from the point of view of a dog, I’m considering adding this to my explorer’s books too

More Kindergarten Stuff

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• Farm Animal Toy Sort
• Nature Walk in your neighborhood
• Learning to Read with making words
• Water filtration experiment
• Little Boy Blue Lesson