Doggone Good! Dog Tales for the K-4 Kid

Here are some dog books which younger readers will sit and stay for!

The grandaddy of dog characters has to be Harry the Dirty Dog, in which Harry (a white dog with BLACK spots) dodges his bath and has so much fun getting dirty that he turns into a black dog with WHITE spots that his own family doesn't recognize--until they give him a bath. Even my not-quite-two years old grandson loved this venerable classic. The series only gets better and better with No Roses for Harry, Harry by the Sea,< and the I-Can-Read Harry and the Lady Next Door. The first Harry is also available (along with some other "terrific tails" in DVD as Harry the Dirty Dog, Five other famous dog stories are also included on this disk.

Two really hilarious and award-winning canines can be found in Cosmo Zooms, in which the singularly untalented Cosmo accidentally learns to excel in skateboarding, and Officer Buckle and Gloria, in which Gloria, a real ham of a police dog, augments Officer Buckle's humdrum safety lectures with more than a touch of canine body language. (Officer Buckle and Gloria is one of the "terrific tails" included in the Harry DVD above.)

One of my favorite dogs is Martha from the series by Susan Meddaugh. Martha finds her voice (really!) when she eats alphabet soup in Martha Speaks. At first Martha's family delights in having a talking dog, but when they get weary of her verbosity and tell her to "SHUT UP," Martha lays off the letters and loses it vocally until a burglar keeps her busy with some soup while he plunders the house. Martha craftily gobbles the alphabet soup and calls the cops, and her family is grateful to hear her voice again. The plots thicken in Martha Calling, Martha Blah Blah, Martha Walks the Dog, Martha and Skits, and the latest, Perfectly Martha, in which Martha goes undercover to detect an obedience school scam. My experience reading these out loud to elementary classes was that you can count on Martha to tickle a kid's kibble!

Click on any of the these canine capers for doggy tales that keep 'em wagging!