A Dog Called Dad

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Writer Edwards and illustrator Bianchi have successfully collaborated
many times on humorous picture books for pre- and early-school
audiences, and their comic inventiveness in text and illustration is
once again fully present in this book. Roman mythology and Kipling’s
Jungle Books, among others, have provided stories of children being
reared by wolves, but Edwards is likely the first to offer a tale of an
adult being raised by coyotes.

Told from the perspective of the adult’s son, the unnamed narrator
relates how coyotes stole Dad one night from the family’s desert
chicken farm. For the next eight years, son and Mom saw Dad only when he
was silhouetted against the moon, howling with his fellow coyotes. One
night, however, while Dad was with his coyote family on a chicken raid,
his (pony) tail got caught in the barbed-wire fence. Over time, Mom and
son managed to domesticate Dad, and the narrator came to delight in
romping with his dog-Dad. As the narrator grew older, though, he had
less time to spend with his pet, and eventually loneliness, plus the
call of the wild, caused Dad to return to the pack. But he and his feral
buddies could always be lured back by a chicken stew.

The wonderful absurdity of the text is splendidly complemented by
Bianchi’s lively cartoon-style illustrations, which capture Dad’s
doglike behaviors. Recommended.