LITTLE WHITE DOG

Yaccarino’s illustrations create a memorable visual puzzle to accompany Godwin’s text, recalling such titles as Ann Jonas’s Round Trip (1983) and Charles Shaw’s It Looked Like Spilt Milk (1947). A little white dog has disappeared, part of the snow, with only a black dot of an eye and a pointed nose to help readers find him. Other animals friends of his also fade away: A blue bird is all but invisible against the blue sky; a brown horse gallops imperceptibly across brown gravel; a black cat is lost against a pitch-black sky. Yaccarino leaves out the defining outlines of his creatures, until “TURN ON THE LIGHT!” A flashlight appears in the pages and shows the proper shapes of the entire menagerie. The bold graphic style is easy on children, but pleasing for adult onlookers as well. Details, such as the black cat’s extremely long shadow, and the little white dog’s trail of black footprints, are evidence of fine-tuning on an already well-synchronized concept. (Picture book. 2-5)