DOGS, DOGS, DOGS!

Newman and Oller (Cats, Cats, Cats!, 2001) join forces again for this canine counting exercise featuring a pack of extremely exuberant dogs of every size, shape, and shade. The rhyming text begins with “one dog walking through the city all alone,” and continues, with an escalating pace, in following consecutively larger groups of dogs wagging, racing, lunging, dashing, and gallivanting. They converge with even more dogs in a city park, with their impish group antics shown over two double-page spreads. Then the dogs are “homeward bound,” as the following pages count down through smaller groups of dogs, back to the same single dog from the first page, now tired and dirty, heading home. Newman’s rollicking, action-filled text is playful and cheerful, if occasionally just a bit forced in a few of the rhyming words. She does an excellent job of increasing the dramatic tension as the groups of dogs grow larger and more boisterous, devising quite an array of collisions and physical comedy. Oller’s wonderfully subtle watercolors are full of motion and humorous details that will amuse children who like to search illustrations for tiny visual jokes. She has a flair for both animal expressions and body placement, and her loose, playful style suits the amusing antics of the dozens of dogs. Another collaboration (on the subject of perennially popular pigs) is already in the works for this talented pair. (Picture book. 3-8)