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HONEY & LEON TAKE THE HIGH ROAD by Alan Cumming

HONEY & LEON TAKE THE HIGH ROAD

From the Honey & Leon series

by Alan Cumming ; illustrated by Grant Shaffer

Pub Date: April 30th, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-55800-9
Publisher: Random House

Two New York City dogs shadow their dads on another trip.

Big, fluffy Honey and small, chipper Leon protect their dads pretty handily at home in the East Village. When they hear the all-too-familiar sound of squeaking luggage wheels, they spring into action. Honey creates a distraction (by, um, piddling inside), while Leon checks the tickets online. Their dads are flying to London. The dogs break out their disguises and tail their dads across the pond. (The avuncular-bordering-on-patronizing narrator informs readers that the dads are on to their dogs’ shenanigans but indulge the canine need to protect their humans.) From London to Edinburgh to the island of Barra, Honey and Leon doggedly protect their dads from nonvegan soup and other hazards. There, Honey is distracted by a lovely collie named Coll, and so it falls to Leon to single-pawedly save everyone in the dense Scottish fog by barking in a brogue as he follows the scent of gluten-free pastry. The family wings it home, and the pups barely make it in time to greet their dads as if the pooches had never left the city. Cumming and Shaffer team up again to tell nearly the same story as The Adventures of Honey & Leon (2017). This is as charming and self-indulgent, but it offers little new aside from the setting (Scotsman Cumming’s home).

Déjà vu aside, it’s a pleasant-enough outing.

(Picture book. 3-8)