Poor Dingle! His job is to be Gramma's service dog. The problem is, Gramma can do everything for herself and doesn't need Dingle's help. He sits there every day bored. Finally, he has a bright idea for how to help. He enlists the aid of an engineer friend and soon finds that he can be a good service dog, even for an independent soul like Gramma.
With young children's books, I generally look to see how appealing it is to the child, as well as how useful it could be. As for appeal, Susan Anderson-Shorter did an excellent job. The illustrations are bright and colorful. A few sections on each page have great detail, while the overall page is simple enough for younger children to pick out items. As for use, I imagined a young child taking this book to a more elderly person to have them read it to them. Being a children's book, most of the people who use service dogs wouldn't be picking this up to read it. For a grandparent though, reading this to a child would provide the enjoyment of shared reading time and hopefully give them something to think about at the same time.
The story itself is cute and fun. On a purely entertainment level, it allows children to have a bright little escape into the book world. On a larger scale, the book teaches about the use of service dogs as well as the importance of allowing others to help us.
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