100 books like Big Dog and Little Dog

My dad used to read to me every night as a kid, and among my favorites were those of the whimsical Dr. Seuss-esque variety.

While this book isn’t technically penned by Dr. Seuss, it maintains the same whimsy through its illustrations. The simplicity of the text helped me learn to identify words as a small kid. Upon revisiting the book as an adult, I am also delighted by the blunt honesty of the illustrated dogs.

My dad passed away recently, and the memory of him reading this book to me has become even more cherished.

How Rocket Learned to Read is a charming easy-to-read picture book based on the joys of teaching and learning. In it, a little yellow bird teaches Rocket, the spotted dog, to read. Rocket begins by learning the alphabet. After that, he picks up little words like “Grrrrrr!” and “Whoosh!.” Little bird helps Rocket move on to words like “fall” and “red,” signaling a change in seasons. When winter comes, the little yellow bird must fly south. Although Rocket misses little bird, he keeps up with his schoolwork by practicing writing his “ABCs” in the snow. When the little bird returns in the spring, Rocket is now splashing in a word he can now spell: “mud.” Best of all he can spell the word “wag,” which is what he does with his tail when the little bird happily returns for the next season of school.

In Dig, Dogs, Dig early readers will delight in the rhymes and illustrations that are context clues to the words in the text. As the hard-working crew of dogs builds a new park, they dig with bulldozers and dump trucks and diggers and loaders. Along the way, they discover a dinosaur bone, which becomes the featured attraction of the new park.

Biscuit is a curious little dog who loves the garden. He scampers about enjoying the butterflies and worms and especially the birds. But when Biscuit accidentally knocks over a bag of birdseed, his accident has a happy ending, for the seeds attract even more birds to the garden. Biscuit in the Garden offers simple words and a simple but engaging plot for young readers who are just beginning to read.

When bedtime arrives, where is Fred? A big, fluffy dog, he’s busying himself with everything else, except getting ready for bed. He runs through flower beds and mud, needs a bath, plays hide-and-seek, and finally ask for one more story. Mirroring behavior of any toddler avoiding bedtime, Fred finally gets ready for a good night sleep. Drawn loosely in ink and watercolor, Fred will run away with your heart as well.

Dogs and children turn us into neighbors; they force us into friendships we would not otherwise consider, and they present us with a gazillion opportunities to practice compassion. When Harry Met Minnie is a story of the friendship, first and foremost between two bull terriers but also between two women, one of whom is dying of cancer. I went back and forth in this book: sometimes I was the friend, and my heart was breaking under the enormous weight of the inevitable and pending death. Other times I was in bed next to the woman who was dying, and my own understanding of cancer was growing deeper with every page. And every now and again, I was one of those two wonderful dogs running in the field, tumbling with the sheer delight of being a dog. And still I wonder – where on earth would we be without dogs to… show more.

Though easy to mock for their repetitive plots and outdated societal attitudes, children of all ages devoured Enid Blyton’s mystery stories ravenously, and I was no exception. Blyton was an absurdly prolific writer, and it’s tough to pick a favourite from her expansive catalogue, but if you twisted my arm, I’d have to go with 1945’s The Mystery of the Secret Room. I still remember my excitement as I followed the five intrepid “find-outers” (and dog!) on their quest to uncover the mystery behind a fully furnished room in a supposedly abandoned house, all the while outsmarting the dim-witted local policeman, Mr. Goon. An unusual choice, perhaps, but this book, and indeed Blyton’s entire oeuvre, were a formative influence on me and sparked a lifelong love of amateur detectives.

Flush is an experimental novella by Virginia Woolf that relays the biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s beloved cocker spaniel.

Told from the titular Flush’s point of view, Woolf mixes imagination with research, drawing largely from Browning’s own poems about the dog for inspiration, as she portrays the pup’s inner thoughts as he goes from a carefree country puppy to the city dog of a reclusive poetess, and back to the country as the Brownings marry and flee London for the Italian countryside.

This is a story fraught with dangers and full of triumphs and sweet moments that will warm the hearts of any dog lover.

Most of you know Sara from America’s Got Talent? Originally from Canada, Sara and her dogs are peripatetic performers; she, living her childhood her dream, and her pups realizing theirs, all living in her car, traveling the States, and performing for enthusiastic crowds. I first met Sara when she was conducting an on-stage workshop at the APDT Annual Conference: Backward Leg Weaves, balancing on the souls of her feet, and even a Faux Pee. It was stunning. 

Sara just loves trick training and dancing with her dogs because it fosters better communication, closeness, and attention. Her dogs get the opportunity to regularly ‘let off steam’ and wag with glee, but then they walk off stage, calmly by her side, because they want to walk by her side—the veritable tango of dog training. There’s more to ‘rhythm and tricks’ than meets the eye, much more: flexibility, balance, core-strengthening,… show more.

Of all my picks, this one is the most startling read, I think. It follows the life of a very small boy, left for some reason abandoned, who takes refuge with a stray bitch and her litter, and consequently grows up as a dog.

This, too, is very much a tragedy; although he lives as a dog, and everything he knows is of being a dog, yet the boy is not a dog and cannot remain one, and his own complete failure to understand his circumstances when he is rescued results in one of the most heartbreaking endings to any book I have ever read.

It’s a strange and beautiful experience, reading this book, and although yes, it will break you, it gives a rare insight into how it can be for anyone brought up outside his proper culture.