Circle Dogs

by Kevin Henkes, Dan Yaccarino (Illustrator)

Overview

Young readers will want to wiggle and bounce and dig through the day with the circle dogs . . . until it's time for bed!

The circle dogs live in a big, square house with a big, square yard. See the dogs? See the circles?

The sun comes up, the baby cries, and the circle dogs stretch and yawn. With a flip-flap of their tails the rambunctious pooches are off to spend a happy day with Mama, Papa, Big Sister, and Baby in the big square house.

A joyous picture book bursting with activity, shapes, and playful sounds from acclaimed illustrator Dan Yaccarino and Kevin Henkes, creator of Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse and many other beloved and bestselling picture books.

The wonderfully fresh and vivid look of the artwork paired with the rhythmic whimsical cadence of the text makes this book a perfect choice for very young audiences.

"Each page is a beautifully composed arrangement of sleek shapes that float on a field of creamy paper." (New York Times Book Review)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780688154462
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/17/1998
Edition description:	1 ED
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.25(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Kevin Henkes has been praised both as a writer and as an illustrator and is the recipient of the Children’s Literature Legacy Award for his lasting contribution to literature for children. He received the Caldecott Medal for Kitten’s First Full Moon; Caldecott Honors for Waiting and Owen; two Newbery Honors, one for Olive’s Ocean and one for The Year of Billy Miller; and Geisel Honors for Waiting and Penny and Her Marble. His other books include The World and Everything in It; A House; A Parade of Elephants; Chrysanthemum; and the beloved Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. Kevin Henkes lives with his family in Madison, Wisconsin.

Dan Yaccarino is an internationally acclaimed author-illustrator with more than thirty children’s books to his credit, including I Am a Story, Five Little Pumpkins, Five Little Bunnies, Trashy Town, and Giant Tess. He also created and produced Nickelodeon’s Oswald and is the character designer behind The Backyardigans. You can visit him at www.yaccarinostudio.com.

Hometown:

Madison, Wisconsin

Date of Birth:

November 27, 1960

Place of Birth:

Racine, Wisconsin

Education:

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Website:

http://www.kevinhenkes.com

Editorial Reviews

"Shapes cavort in the form of circle dogs that live in a big square house in this delightful book. Imitative of the early work of Margaret Wise Brown." — Kirkus Reviews

"Dramatizes the toddler's visceral, joyful, licking, cuddling bond with two circle dachshunds." — ALA Booklist

“Dramatizes the toddler's visceral, joyful, licking, cuddling bond with two circle dachshunds.” — Chicago Tribune

“Shapes cavort in the form of circle dogs that live in a big square house in this delightful book. Imitative of the early work of Margaret Wise Brown.” — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

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.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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

School Library Journal

. . .[A]n evocative piece of writing that would be a joy to read aloud to a child. -- The New York Times Book Review

James McMullan

Shapes cavort in the form of circle dogs (long thin dachshunds that chase their tails, forming circles) that live in a big square house in this delightful book for the very young. Imitative of the early work of Margaret Wise Brown, this collaboration has the retro look, feel, and sound of her classic Noisy Book series. Yaccarino uses essentially the four-color palette of a few decades back, set against a creamy vanilla background, with a bolder, more graphic, and deliberately contemporary design that plays with the rearrangement of space to show circle dogs that clink-clank their tags and flip-flap their tails. Circle dogs dig circle holes and eat from circle bowls. They snap at the air, lick Big Sister's face, and sleep a lot in simple pictures that emphasize shape and form, with circles everywhere: the mouths of people, the tips of dog's noses, the bones of a steak, the dogs themselves. Henkes completes the goodnight tale with just the right amount of sounds for the sensory enjoyment of preschoolers. (Picture book. 2-4)

Kirkus Reviews