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CM . . .
. Volume XVIII Number 33. . . .April 27, 2012
excerpt:
We all know what the word up means, right? Or do we? This delightful pair of board books illustrates how important context is to a word’s meaning. In Up Dog, an open door sees a small dog heading for the yard where s/he(?) digs up a bone, muddily drags it back into the house, and messes up the living room, all actions that lead to the dog’s being banished to a fenced area of the yard while the dog’s owner cleans up the yard and house messes left by the dog. When everything is more or less restored to its original state, the dog is invited back into the house where, all-forgiven, the dog is cuddled by its owner.
Highly Recommended. Dave Jenkinson, CM’s editor, lives in Winnipeg, MB.
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While Up Dog shows the bond that can form between dogs and humans, Up Cat is a reminder of the independent nature of cats. Upon waking, a small cat signals its hunger by meowing, but then haughtily rejects the food proffered by its “owner” before embarking on an odyssey of typical cat activities, including stalking, leaping, batting and tearing. After climbing into an open box, the cat spies food on a table and jumps up, only to knock over a glass of milk, a happening which earns the cat a timeout on a window ledge. Undeterred by its punishment, the cat uses this setting as an opportunity to groom itself before hissing at a dog in the yard, the one from Up Dog. That aggressive action then causes the cat to fall off the ledge, back into the house. Using its feline agility, the cat rights itself before landing and then utilizes an arm chair as a scratching post before embarking on yet another cat nap, this one sun-drenched
In both books, with but a couple of exceptions, each page of text is limited to just two words, with one of them being up. The entire storyline is essentially carried by Fanny’s spare cartoon-like illustrations which also provide the context for that page’s use of up. I did have a quibble with the last six pages of Up Cat where the text seemed to be running ahead of the illustrations. However, communication with the publisher indicated that this error has been caught and that Up Cat has now been reprinted.