Good Dog, Carl

Good Dog, Carl is yet another one of our nearly-wordless friends. It's about a mother who goes out to run some errands, leaving her baby in the care of a large black pet dog, Carl, while she's gone. Carl and the baby get in all kinds of exciting but messy adventures around the house, but Carl cleans everything up and puts the baby back to bed before the mother gets home, so she is none the wiser.

The illustrations in this book are very realistic drawings, but often two scenes, or a before-and-after, are shown on the same page without any lines in between. I've noticed that this is rather confusing to Charlie, thinking that there are two dogs or two babies instead of understanding the time-lapse. That's exactly why Montessori advocates a single picture on each page at this age. Still, this is an interpretive skill that kids need to learn, and a wordless book invites lots of discussion, so I haven't found it to be too much of a problem.

Charlie enjoys narrating this book to me, much more so than his other wordless books. I'm not sure whether that's something inherent in the story, perhaps it's more familiar or easier to follow, or whether it's just that I introduced this book at a slightly older age than our other wordless books, so he has more ability and less history of being read to from this book. This is generally a fun book, but not one of our all-time favorites.