Chip Wants a Dog
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Chip has dreamed about owning a dog since he was a baby. A dog would be his best friend, for he would teach it to sit, stay, fetch, and roll over. But Chip's parents refuse to buy him one. One night, Chip's dream reveals a deep truth about who Chip is. Chip doesn't need a dog; he is a dog! From then on, his life is changed--he takes himself for walks; teaches himself to sit, stay, and fetch; and makes plenty of neighborhood friends!
Reader Level 2: Level 2 is for Progressing Readers who can read longer sentences with simple dialogue. These books offer pictures and context clues, in-depth plot development, and are available in both fiction and nonfiction books.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Some picture book characters yearn so ferociously for a pet that they begin to act like one, only to wake up and become human again. Wegman (Puppies) proposes a more radical solution. Chip, the title character, is not quite a boy. He is recognizably one of the author/photographer's Weimaraner stars in a button-down shirt, corduroy pants and plaid sneakers. Yet Chip appears to stand on two legs, and uses his human hands to hold the leash of his life-size, plush Weimaraner. "If I had a dog, I would teach it to do tricks," he sighs, as photos depict the expressionless toy with a stick in its mouth or standing on its head. Meanwhile, Chip's parents also canines deny him a pet. Chip's mother is "a cat person," decked out in a shawl with a kitten design, and his father adds to the irony with some finger-wagging: "Dogs are a lot of responsibility." Wegman follows the conventional formula until the dream sequence in which Chip becomes what he desires most. "I'm a dog!... I'm a dog!... I'm a dog!" Chip repeats, in a blurred, close-up spread of a swiftly moving Weimaraner. When Chip sits up in bed, his clothes are gone: "I don't need a dog, I am a dog," he realizes. Readers have recognized Chip's doggishness all along, but Wegman presents this foregone conclusion as a revelation. At heart, this is a typical be-yourself book, but Wegman's photos (and willing models) wryly emphasize Chip's transformation from uptight to unfettered. All ages.
