local_shipping   Free Standard Shipping on all orders $25+ and use Coupon Code SummerReading for an additional 20% off!

  • Circle Dogs

Circle Dogs

Author
Illustrator
Dan Yaccarino
Publication Date
September 17, 1998
Genre / Grade Band
Fiction /  K − 1st
Language
English
Circle Dogs
This book is currently unavailable.
Description
The circle dogs live in a big, square house with a big, square yard. See the dogs? See the circles? Mama calls them pooches. Papa calls them hounds. "I'm a dog!" says Big Sister. Baby is, too. And even the youngest reader will want to wiggle and bounce and dig through the day with the circle dogs....until it is time for bed. An inspired collaboration, a new take on simple shapes, a story to read again and again.
Publication date
September 17, 1998
Genre
Fiction
ISBN-13
9780688154462
Lexile Measure
30
Publisher
Greenwillow Books
BISAC categories
JUV002070 - Juvenile Fiction | Animals | Dogs
JUV009060 - Juvenile Fiction | Concepts | Size & Shape
Library of Congress categories
Dogs
Circle
Shape
Shapes

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 1-A love letter to dachshunds, called "circle dogs" because of their ability to form that shape with their bodies. The text is simple, almost primerlike, with lots of onomatopoetic words: "Circle dogs like circle snacks-crunch, crunch, crunch-right from your hand." The pooches play, dig holes (and get yelled at), sniff Baby's face and lick Big Sister's, bounce, bark, and sleep (a lot). The lively gouache paintings in large flat areas of color have a retro look, somewhat reminiscent of Lane Smith's work in The Happy Hocky Family! (Viking, 1993) or Yaccarino's illustrations for Laura Godwin's Little White Dog (Hyperion, 1998). Besides the circles made by the dachshunds, there are lots of other shapes to pick out in the pictures. Fun for the youngest dog lovers.-Pam Gosner, formerly at Maplewood Memorial Library, NJ

Publishers Weekly

Henkes, who spoke to an elementary-age audience in Owen and Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, here gets down to basics with this lively description of a day in the life of two dachshunds. The tube-shaped dogs--one rust-orange with black ears, the other vice versa (both have blue noses and collars)--form circles while they are resting. At dawn, they uncurl and greet a mother, father, little girl and baby boy ("clink-clank, ... clink./ Hear their tags?/ Mrooon, mro-o-o-o-on./ They stretch and stretch and moan and yawn"). The story follows a morning-to-evening sequence of mealtimes, playtimes and naptimes, and comes full-circle, as it were, with the dogs bedded down for the night. Henkes infuses even this simplest of texts with humor: at breakfast, "Papa drops his toast./ Oops! Where did it go?/ The circle dogs know." He balances full sentences with fragments, and punctuates the story with the everyday sounds of barking, crunching and doorbell-ringing. Yaccarino's (Goodnight, Mr. Night) opaque, geometric graphics and limited gouache palette complement the concise statements. Squares and rectangles form window views inside and outside the house, and hem in the fluid shapes of the dogs and people. Author and artist judiciously repeat imagery and phrases ("Mama calls them pooches. Those pooches!' says Mama"); and the diversity of words and sentence structures ensure a book that runs circles around the usual primer. Ages 2-up. (Sept.)
More books like this