The Bookshop Dog
Harriet Evans and Claire Shorrock
Little Tiger

Scamper absolutely loves his home with Paige at The Happy Tails Bookshop and can’t imagine a better place to live in the whole world. Everybody in the neighbourhood has made him feel welcome and he loves them all, Paige especially. To show his appreciation, the pooch decides to follow her example and he selects some books he thinks his friends might enjoy reading. This proves very successful: Scamper has helped all his friends

but is there a book that can put a smile on the face of the person who seems to have read every one already? His search of his friends’ abodes yields nothing suitable and it’s a down-hearted Scamper that returns to the bookshop but joy of joys …

What a delightful character is Scamper, especially in the way his observations enable him to find the right book for each person, even though it’s unlikely to be what they themselves would have chosen.
I love that reading and books are celebrated both verbally and visually at every turn of the page: listeners and readers aloud will love the wordplay and clever book titles – Mansfield Bark and Doggy Deeds of Derring Do – for instance. Claire Shorrock’s illustrations have lots of details that offer starting points for discussion and I absolutely love the exchange between Paige and Scamper near the end: “Reading takes us all on incredible journeys.” (Paige) and ‘reading is a way of coming home.’ (Scamper). So true, both.