DOGS

“I love dogs,” states an unseen narrator at the beginning of this winningly simple opposites book. Utilizing the same color scheme—a gray-and-sepia palette on cream stock with only occasional, judicious touches of color—that she employed in Monkey and Me (2008), Gravett presents readers with an endearing collection of canines. This narrator is decidedly catholic in taste: “I love big dogs / and small dogs. // I love tough dogs / and soft dogs. // I love dogs that bark / and dogs that don’t.” With one pair of opposites per spread, there’s plenty of room for the illustrator’s signature whimsy. The big/small spread features an amiable Great Dane gazing benignly down at a tiny Chihuahua between his front paws. Good/bad shows two dogs with markedly different approaches to their master’s slippers. All in all, it’s a pleasingly goofy cast of characters that begs the question, is there any kind of dog this narrator does not like? The last spread reveals the identity of the narrator—which, in classic Gravett fashion, will make readers chuckle and then rethink the entire book that preceded it. (Picture book. 4-8)