BENJY'S DOG HOUSE

Benjy, the dog who faced a Barking Bird (KR, 1971), starts out here sleeping sometimes on Linda's bed and sometimes on Jimmy's bed, and that's the way he ends up too, with the barrel Father had planned for a dog house converted into a strawberry planter. Benjy actually spends the intervening nights, when the family believes him to be in his backyard barrel, in the ""warm, cozy bakery,"" but the return of the baker's cat leads indirectly to Benjy's reinstatement at home. Margaret Bloy wins your sympathy at the start for the crouched, helpless subject of a family conflict most dog owners can recognize, and she puts enough expression into her primitive charcoal cartoons that small children will experience the loneliness and comfort and stomach ache (from the baker's meat pies) and tail-thumping pleasure of reunion right along with Benjy.