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Summary
Summary
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)
Author Notes
Kevin Henkes was born in Racine, Wis. in 1960 and graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. One of four children in his family, Henkes grew up with aspirations of being an artist. As a junior in high school, one of Henkes's teachers awakened his interest in writing. Falling in love with both writing and drawing, Henkes realized that he could do both at the same time as a children's book author and illustrator.
At the age of 19, Henkes went to New York City to get his first book, All Alone, published. Since that time, he has written and illustrated dozens of picture books including Chrysanthemum, Protecting Marie, and A Weekend with Wendell. A recurring character in several of Henkes's books is Lily, an outrageous, yet delightful, individualist. Lily finds herself the center of attention in the books Chester's Way, Julius, the Baby of the World, and Lily's Purple Plastic Purse.
A Weekend With Wendell was named Children's Choice Book by the Children's Book Council in 1986. He recieved the Elizabeth Burr Award for Words of Stone in 1993. Owen was named a Caldicott Honor in 1994. The Year of Billy Miller was named a Newbery Honor book in 2014.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
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 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
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 dogsone 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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Circles, rectangles, triangles, and other distinct shapes configure to create the stylized, high-contrast illustrations in this day in the life of two dachshunds and the family they live with. The lilting text contains much onomatopoeia and repetition as it describes the dogs playing, eating, napping, making mischief, and finally curling up to sleep for the night. From HORN BOOK Spring 1999, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
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)
Booklist Review
Ages 2^-5. "Two circle dogs live in a big square house." Part loving pet story, part math lesson, this picture book dramatizes the toddler's visceral, joyful, licking, cuddling bond with two circle dachshunds. At the same time, kids will see the simple shapes in the house that the family and dogs share through the day. The direct physical words and the clear, bright gouache pictures, which are like cutouts on lots of white space, will draw in youngsters to interact with the pages, imitating the sounds ("Kibble-clatter, kibble-nibble") as the dogs crunch their circle snacks in circle bowls or run in circles in the square yard or curl up in circles to sleep and sleep and sleep. Many concept books, such as Tana Hoban's Round & Round & Round (1983), use photos and other illustrations to identify shapes in everyday life. Here it is the playful doggie tale that will lead kids to find circles, squares, and triangles wherever they look. --Hazel Rochman