Claude at the Circus

December 1, 2013

Gr 1-3-Fastidious, fashionable Claude, "A small, plump dog who wears a beret and a rather fetching sweater," and his pal Sir Bobblysock treat themselves to a day at the park. When the pair attempts to be good citizens by filling in the many holes and picking up balls that litter "a funny sort of field," angry golfers chase them with raised clubs. Claude picks up a "Wet Paint" sign-"another piece of trash he found stuck to a bench." He then takes a ride on a scooter, which enables him to rescue a baby whose buggy has run downhill toward a pond. Because of this feat, the two receive free tickets to the circus. They arrive early, and "give the tent a jolly good spring clean," unwittingly sabotaging the performers' equipment and ruining the show. But the pup entertains the crowd by juggling white balls, riding in the clown cars, and flying on the trapeze with Sir Bobblysock. The friends are rewarded by getting sent home via cannon blast. When his owners return, they wonder "why Claude is wearing a glittery crash helmet...and why there's a Claude-shaped hole in the roof?" The digital black-and-white cartoon illustrations with touches of pink let readers know more about the dog's world than what the text describes. A map of the park provides the opportunity to visually trace Claude's day, and three silly jokes are appended in a "How to be a Clown" page. There is lots of fetching humor for transitional chapter book readers.-Laura Scott, Farmington Community Library, MI

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2013
Children waiting for an absurdist chapter book need tap their toes no more. "Claude's best friend," readers are told, "is Sir Bobblysock. He is both a sock and quite bobbly." (Oddly, the sock in the illustration, though striped, looks quite smooth.) Readers should be warned: The Claude series is full of jokes that are clever but extremely bewildering. This may be a book for a rarified audience. It's a story about a dog who's compulsively neat. When he goes to a golf course, he fills in the holes and picks up the untidy balls littering the grass. Fans of Amelia Bedelia will find this sort of thing hilarious, but some of the jokes are positively surreal. Amelia Bedelia's socks never danced "a high-stepping jig." The climax has everything a child could want in a book. Claude hangs from a tightrope, throws custard pies and is shot out of a cannon. Some readers may wonder why Claude needs to give "the high wire a once-over with a damp cloth," but surrealists probably won't complain. (Fiction. 7-9)

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