My Old Pal, Oscar by Amy Hest (review)

One gray day, a puppy alone on the beach meets a boy. The boy initially resists the pup (“I know what you want. You want to be pals. Well, we can’t be pals”) but relents enough to walk with the little pooch along the beach. As they walk, the boy talks a little about Oscar, his beloved dog who died, and whose memory still looms too large for the boy to fall easily for another dog. When gray clouds turn into thunder, though, the boy finally embraces his new pal, scoops him up, and runs in the rain to the boy’s—and now also the puppy’s—home. It’s hard to resist a classic puppy-finds-home story, and this one gains extra poignancy and dimension from addressing the aftermath of loss. The first-person narration is essentially one-sided dialogue rather than a formal narrative, giving immediacy to the proceedings. Pencil and watercolor art balances the adorableness of the small, fluffy, button-nosed dog with the gloomy leaden skies; skilled compositions shift from puppy-level to kid level, from vignettes to double-page spreads, and cleverly use the geometry of the empty pier and its support posts. Kids who’ve lost pets will especially appreciate the message of missing your old pet while welcoming the new, and dog lovers will heave a sigh of relief at the pup’s happy ending.