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Reviewed by:
  • Run, Dog! by Cécile Boyer
  • Deborah Stevenson
Boyer, Cécile. Run, Dog!: written and illus. by Cécile Boyer; tr. from the French by Chronicle Books. Chronicle, 2014. 28p. ISBN 978-1-4521-2708-8 $16.99 Ad 5-8 yrs.

A big red ball bounces across the landscape and through the pages, pursued by a cheerful yellow dog. The ball, followed by the dog, careens into various scenes—kids bouncing on a park trampoline, a family enjoying an al fresco meal, animals in a zoo—and each time somebody brings order by flinging the ball along elsewhere with a monosyllabic command to the dog, like “Run!” or “Fetch!” The book adds interest with a graduated series of liftable flaps on every other spread, so that the progression of the ball’s disruption is observed stage by stop-motion stage (the ball bounces toward the head of an oblivious pedestrian in one spread; a flap-lift changes the scene so it’s bouncing off his head; another flap lift reveals a third pedestrian catching the ball in front of the excited dog as the ball’s victim and neighbor begin to wordlessly argue). There’s no real plot or payoff here—the dog just winds up with his master, who’s been sitting in the park, and since his master wasn’t introduced to the audience at the beginning, the end doesn’t even close a circle. The art and design are intriguing, though: highly graphic digital illustrations draw on playful candy colors (royal-blue tree trunks sport sugar-pink leafy heads) in crisply minimalist, often silhouetted figures. The sequential flaps seamlessly replace their predecessors, creating amusing reinterpretations of elements of the image (Dad’s casual enjoyment of the family dinner turns into Dad’s unwary heedlessness as the ball aims for his head). Browsing youngsters will enjoy the visuals, and they may be inspired to create their own creatively formatted narratives.

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