THE OLD DOG

A first view of death, clear enough but not nearly as penetrating as Judith Viorst's in The Tenth Good Thing About Barney (1971, p. 805). Ben wakes up and reaches to pat his old dog, then finds that she is dead. At first death seems to be something like sleeping, but after a day of missing the dog Ben concludes that death means someone isn't here. The pictures sensitively contrast remembered scenes with post-dog loneliness, but the appearance of a new black puppy at the end of the day negates the sympathetic honesty of the foregoing text.