LANCE, Charlotte I Have A Dog (an inconvenient dog) Allen& Unwin, 2014 unpaged $19.99 ISBN 9781743317815 SCIS 1661095
This inconvenient dog is large and white, perhaps an Old English Sheep Dog. The line and watercolour wash illustrations show the wild mess and chaos the inconvenient dog can bring about. When the boy who tells the story wakes up, has breakfast, or puts on his socks, everything around him can be in disarray with muddy marks on the floor. The boy’s friends ignore him and make a fuss of the dog instead of playing. On the other hand the dog can be less inconvenient when the boy’s dinner is disgusting or he needs something to snuggle up to in front of scary TV.
At 21½ x 22cm the book is comfortable to hold and feels smooth. The text, amusingly extended by the details in the spontaneous looking illustrations on each page, is minimal. Young readers will be attracted to the unusually sophisticated description – an ‘inconvenient’ dog – and gain more understanding of the concept when it becomes a less inconvenient dog later in the gentle, quirky chronicle.
reviewed by Elspeth Cameron
