No Dogs Allowed

alliya - Kate and Lucie are best friends. Kate is neat and Lucie is messy. Kate wakes up early and Lucie loves to sleep in. But both girls love, love, love dogs! Unfortunately, Kate and Lucie live in apartments where dogs are not allowed. Instead of real dogs, they have dog T-shirts, dog sheets and pajamas, and dog books. But nothing is quite the same as having a real dog. One day, the girls discover sparkly pink dog necklaces at the thrift store and try them on. But when they admire themselves in the mirror and give each other high fives, there is a pop and a whoosh and the girls are turned into dogs! Now it seems like Kate and Lucie won’t need their own pet dogs . . . because they’ll be having furry adventures of their own!

September 23, 2013
Frequent collaborators Calmenson and Cole begin the Ready Set, Dogs! series with a peppy story that takes the notion of dog-loving kids to the extreme. Best friends Kate and Lucie are obsessed with dogs, but live in an apartment complex that prohibits them. At a thrift shop, the two try on necklaces with a dog-bone motif and—by high-fiving and uttering “Woofa-woof!”—morph into dogs themselves. (Riffing on the joke that dogs and their owners can sometimes resemble each other, Ross’s cartoons show a humorous likeness between the girls’ human and canine selves.) Switching species at will, Kate and Lucie help lead three stray dogs to a shelter and taunt “the two most annoying boys on the planet,” who are bent on capturing and adopting them. In the story’s feel-good ending, the girls and boys join forces to win an Adopt-a-Dog Week songwriting contest. Good-natured banter and silliness (“Stop sniffing me!” “I can’t help it. Everything smells amazing—even you!”) move the story along at a brisk pace. Ages 6–9. Authors’ agent: Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. Illustrator’s agent: Steven Malk, Writers House.

February 1, 2014

Gr 2-5-Dog-loving best friends Katie and Lucie live next door to one another in an apartment building with an unfortunate rule: NO DOGS ALLOWED. On a trip to the neighborhood thrift shop, the girls try on matching pink dog bone-shaped necklaces and discover that the jewelry holds the power to turn its wearers into dogs. Fortunately, they quickly figure out how to turn back into girls, and they have fun shape-shifting at will for the remainder of the story. Lucie and Katie join forces with two boys to write the winning submission for a local radio contest promoting Adopt-a-Dog Week. Back matter includes dog jokes, true stories about heroic dogs, and the authors' real-life dog ownership tales. Occasional black-and-white drawings highlight key characters and scenes, such as a humorous scene of the girls, in dog form, digging holes in a garden as their mothers look on with shocked expressions. This fun, quick read will have young dog lovers sitting up and begging for the next book in the series.-Amanda Struckmeyer, Middleton Public Library, Madison, WI

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