Classic Picture Book

Eastman, P.D. Go,Dog.Go!. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1961.

ISBN 0394800206

Summary of Plot:

Dogs of all colors and sizes are busy going about their daily routines such as driving around in cars, playing, reading, working, and even conversing about hats. The dogs sleep at night and they go during the day. Eventually all the dogs start driving to a central location and they all end up at a big dog party!

Critical Analysis:

The simple and repetitive language of Go, Dog. Go! makes it a valuable piece of literature for emergent and beginning readers. The simple language also allows beginning readers to build fluency and phrasing as they continually come to prepositional phrases. The illustrations by Eastman are very detailed and can be humorous at times. For example on one page Eastman writes simple sentences about it being night and all the dogs are asleep, the illustrations provide more depth by showing a bed that spans both pages and sleeps all the dogs. The illustration also depicts one dog who is still awake, a teeny-tiny dog sprawled in the center of the bed, and one dog whose bottom half sticks out from under the bed. The extra details allow readers to communicate about what they see in the illustrations, providing more depth to the story. The book's words and illustrations make it humorous and entertaining for readers. There is an interchange between a girl poodle and a boy dog who converse about the poodle's hat. The dog repeatedly states he does not like her hat, but in the end she surprises him with an outrageously large and ornate hat that he finally likes. That particular interchange is surprising, funny, and evokes emotion from the reader. Go, Dog. Go! is an entertaining book that builds excitement for reading at an early age.

Reviews:

School Library Journal lists Go, Dog. Go! as number 28 in it top 100 picture book lists.

Connections:

*Draw a picture of something you do from day to day and write a sentence that mimics the sentences from the story. For example, the sentence may contain a color word or positional word to describe the picture.

*Get creative and design a hat that the yellow dog in the story would indeed like.

*Use opposites from the book and write them on index cards to play a matching game.

*Write a short that mimics the antics of the dogs, but change the characters to another animal.