How to Talk to Your Dog » (REPRINT)

Jean Craighead George is the author of over eighty books for children and young adults. Her novel Julie of the Wolves won the Newbery Medal in 1973, and her novel My Side of the Mountain was a Newbery Honor Book in 1960. She has continued to write acclaimed picture books and novels that celebrate the natural world. She lives in Chappaqua, New York, and has had over 173 pets in the time she has lived there, among them geese and ducks.

These informative, goodnatured guides to pet behavior emphasize the importance of learning the ways in which pets communicate emotions through their actions, facial expressions, and body positions. The combination of photos of the author and cartoony illustrations of animals works against the factual insistence of the texts; however, the illustrations are for the most part skillful at capturing familiar animal expressions.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Book)

In this companion volume to How To Talk To Your Cat, George turns her lens on the canine world. Those familiar with the animal-behavior aspect of George's JULIE OF THE WOLVES won't be surprised to see her detailed examination as the author explains vocalizations, tail positions, scent and sniffing, facial expressions, and various other aspects of doggy socializing. In this book too, some of the statements are a bit misleading (not all dogs strive for dominance, for instance), but the author is clear about the heirarchical nature of dogs and the impact of human leadership (Telling your dog he is good is his reward for living). The mixed photography (of George, representing the humans) and illustration (an endearingly scruffy yellow mutt is the main canine representative) is again effective. Truesdell's got a gift for casually cockeyed canines: there's a Feifferesque touch to her scrawled lines, and her panoply of pooches are expressive in the extreme with their motion lines and flying ears (the collection on the endpapers will send dogophiles into sighs of yearning). As with George's cat volume, this will be an accesible and perhaps paradigm-shifting introduction for young readers.