TULIP LOVES REX

Wince-inducing platitudes lace this saccharine story of loving and being loved.

Tulip loves to dance. All the time. Her parents think she’s wonderful, and everyone smiles vacuously. All the time. Tulip’s smiling parents bring her to the park, where she befriends a large, unaccompanied dog with a note on his rope collar that says his name is Rex and that he is “not quite like other dogs.” After ordering him to fetch, sit and catch, none of which he does, she tells him that she doesn’t “mind a bit. We all have something we love to do. We just have to discover what it is.” It appears he loves romping with Tulip. When it’s time to go home, Tulip cavorts some more and discovers that on the back of Rex’s note is a plea: “Will you take me home?” Tulip’s doting parents allow this. By the end of the book, Tulip proclaims that “there’s nothing quite like sharing love….” Tulip may resolutely dip, twirl, gallop and pirouette through each earnest, well-meaning page, but the story itself putters flatly along until, with a tired sigh, it ends. The illustrations, while colorful, add no other layers, simply mirroring what the text relates.

A self-consciously didactic story that deals blandly with its theme.