Canine Blitzkrieg! The Great Puppy Invasion by Alastair Heim

One day a puppy showed up in little Teddy's town.

Then two. Then hundreds.

The locals panicked. They had never seen puppies before.

There are all kinds of pooches in the onslaught--frizzy, foxy, and fluffy, shaggy and sleek, perky-eared, lop-eared and flop-eared, black, brown, beige, and white ones, brown-spotted white ones, and black-and-tan ones. And all with big bright eyes and wagging tails.

There is a pooch incursion in Strictville!

And with a draconian motto like theirs--All work and no play make for a great day-- the townspeople agree to the decree that any kind of levity is illegal. A puppy invasion is clearly verboten!

The panicked populace try running away, but the pups just bounce hopefully after them. The people toss sticks right at the mutts.

But the puppies brought the sticks right back.

The town is captivated by incredible canine cuteness.

The mayor calls a mass meeting. Rules are reinforced. A moratorium is laid down against fraternizing with the invaders. Teddy's mother forbids him even to look at the puppies.

"Don't touch, Teddy!" she warned.

But the big-eyed little dogs are not so easily dissuaded from socializing with the Strictvillians. Finally the people make a run for it, straight to their dog-hair-free domiciles, and slam their doors tight behind them. The pups yip, and yap, and woof and bow-wow outside.

But Teddy heard a teeny whimper...coming from the tiniest puppy of all.

The puppy sat down on Teddy's lawn, and lifted its front paw....

Oh, no! NOT the wistful whimper and puppy-proffered paw trick..., the deadliest doggy tactic of them all....!

As the townspeople watch warily from their windows, Teddy can't resist taking that little paw in his own small hand, and it's all over for the prudish people of Strictville, who succumb to catastrophic cuteness and begin to adopt that most irresistible pet in the world....

Except... unseen on the outskirts of the city is a little bitty gray kitty, waiting for her turn to take on the town, giving the reader a knowing wink that says, "We'll see who's the cutest. Just you wait...."

It's a win-win for people and pooches in Alastair Heim's forthcoming The Great Puppy Invasion (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2017), a romping riot of puppies whose invasion is persuasion that pets are good for people and vice-versa. With winsome double-page spreads, artist Kim Smith's bold spreads are filled with unabashedly cute illustrations that portray the peace treaty between puppies and people in a most winning way, with plenty of doggy detail on each page to produce a most delightful read for dog fanciers--and with just a whisker of a wink at a potential feline sequel in the works.