Product Description

The circle dogs live in a big, square house with a big, square yard. See the dogs? See the circles? Mama calls them pooches. Papa calls them hounds. "I'm a dog!" says Big Sister. Baby is, too. And even the youngest reader will want to wiggle and bounce and dig through the day with the circle dogs....until it is time for bed. An inspired collaboration, a new take on simple shapes, a story to read again and again.

Bravo Henkes and Yaccarino!"

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #163055 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 32 pages

From Amazon.com
Ah, essence of dog. You wouldn't want to bottle it, but Kevin Henkes, creator of Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse and illustrator Dan Yaccarino have transformed the concept into an exquisite read-aloud book for dog-loving preschoolers. We meet the two circle dogs, who live in a big, square house, early in the morning when they first wake up. They proceed to roust everyone, distribute good-morning kisses, run in the yard, and dig circle holes. "Circle dogs like circle snacks--crunch, crunch, crunch--right from your hand. They like to play. / They like to roll. / They like to eat. / And then they like to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep." Yaccarino, creator of Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, I'm Off to the Moon, An Octopus Followed Me Home, and Good Night, Mr. Night, shines in this 1950s-style, boldly graphic, shape-saturated tribute to the dachshund, or as Henkes sees it, "everydog." Preschoolers will revel in the supreme dogginess of it all--the circling, snapping, sniffing, gulping, smacking, and face-licking--and adults will be charmed by how artfully and elegantly Henkes and Yaccarino capture the canine je ne sais quoi in this fresh, original bedtime book. Arf! (Click to see a sample spread. Text © 1998 by Kevin Henkes. Illustrations © 1998 by Dan Yaccarino. With permission of Greenwillow Books.) (Ages 2 to 5) --Karin Snelson

From Publishers Weekly
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 dogs?one 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.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 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
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful in its simplicity
I saw that an earlier reviewer criticized the illustrations in this book as "overly simplistic" and lacking in cleverness. I had to write in myself, because I believe Circle Dogs is one of the most perfectly illustrated children's books in years. The pictures are simple, to be sure, but absolutely brilliant! It takes tremendous artistic sophistication to conjure up a whole world with a few simple shapes and colors. Yaccarino's illustrations draw you into a child's-eye miracle world of shapes and sounds, yaps and slurps and whirlwind motion. And toddlers are utterly entranced. I'm buying another copy to give as a gift right now!

Lame indeed
To be fair, my son liked this book reasonably well at age 3 or so. But his mom, dad, and grandmother HATED it every time that was the book he chose for us to read to him. Once in a while, there is a pleasantly poetic sound to the text, but overall, both the text and the "drawings" (which I could do on my computer)are aggressively simplistic, with no hint of cleverness or nuancing. Good children's books entertain not only children, but the adults who read to them. In a world with books by Maurice Sendak, Margaret Wise Brown, Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein, Dr. Seuss, and more (including, when he's feeling a little more subtle, Kevin Henkes), it is unclear why anyone would pick this book. Instead, choose something BOTH you and your child enjoy - it will be a lot easier to instill a love of books if you don't have to hide your disdain while you're reading to your child.

Daughter likes it
My girl just turned 4 and is very artistic/graphic, and she just thinks this book is terrific (even though it says babies to preschool). I agree with the other reviewer, the plot is rather, um... lacking or bizarre (ie. it's never going to be one of my favorites). But she likes the pictures and the conceptualization of it, so I think that's the point. Now she goes around town and see's large O's and says "circle dogs!"