Madlenka's Dog

By Peter Sis
Published in 2002

    This story is about a girl and the one city block where she lives. All Madlenka really wants something many kids do, she wants to have her own dog. Unfortuantly her parents say no. This does not stop her. With her imagination as her guide Madlenka takes her new dog on a walk around her block. Running into all her friends, each one representing a different culture and having their own fond memories of their dogs. She also runs into her fellow friend who has a pet horse (also imaginary). With their imaginations there is no limit to the things they could do.
   One thing I really enjoyed about this book is that it has mulitple layers. It shows all the things you can do with an imagination. Also it incorporates different languages throughout the book. One thing that I found very interesting that I have not seen before was that on each page in the corner there was a little picture of Madlenka's city block. It showed how she was traveling around it and used colored dots to represent the different people she talked to. At the end of the book there was a key for teh dots. As you can see this book can spark many different topics of conversation for children.