My Neighbor Is a Dog - Hardcover

Martins, Isabel Minhós

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1926973682 ISBN 13: 9781926973685

Publisher: Owlkids, 2013

Synopsis

Living in an apartment building can sometimes mean sharing walls with a host of characters — but what about with crocodiles, elephants, and bears? Much to her delight, this is the motley crew that one little girl finds herself living amongst.

Her parents, however, find all their new neighbors to be a little strange. While the little girl is enjoying the saxophone music her friendly dog neighbor plays, her parents bemoan the hair he leaves all over the stairs. When the little girl is grateful for the car wash her helpful elephant neighbors provide, her parents complain of the size of their sheets on the clothesline.

It turns out the girl's parents have a good reason to look down on everyone — they're giraffes! Fed up with their unconventional neighbors, these stuck-up parents decide to move away. But the girl vows to return to live in the building again once she grows up, which is a decision her neighbors don't find strange at all!

About this title

About the Author:

Isabel Minhós Martins is the author of When I Was Born and Little Lamb, Have You Any Wool? She is also the co-founder of Planeta Tangerina, a Portuguese publisher of innovative children's books. She lives in Lisbon, Portugal.

Madalena Matoso studied communication design at Lisbon College of Fine Arts and completed a postgraduate degree in graphic editorial design at the Faculty of Fine Arts Barcelona. She is a prolific illustrator of children's books and lives in Lisbon, Portugal.

From Booklist:

A little girl is excited to watch her new neighbor arrive. And would you believe it? He’s a dog. He’s a perfectly nice dog and even delivers the newspaper to her door in the mornings, but her parents simply do not care for this “very strange” addition to the building. Things only get worse when a pair of elephants and, finally, an alligator move in, even though they are every bit as friendly and helpful as the dog. The Portuguese creators offer a not-so-happy ending, rarer in American picture books, as the parents fail to learn their lesson and move out of the building with their forlorn little girl, who vows that she will return when she grows up. The art, too, has a pleasantly foreign feel to it, with intriguingly designed apartment buildings and an attention-grabbing palette of red and blue. The messages about judging people by their actions rather than their appearances is well camouflaged by the humorous situations and is brought home all the more effectively by the nonstandard ending. Preschool-Grade 1. --Jesse Karp

About this edition

• Publisher: Owlkids
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1926973682
• ISBN 13: 9781926973685
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Matoso Madalena