The Dog Who Was (Almost) Perfect
Jack Kurland
Frances Lincoln Children’s Books

This is the second book by author/illustrator Jack Kurland and this time it features a pooch (mainly). Meet dachshund Doris, a dog that is perfect in everything she does – skateboarding, swimming, stick fetching, squirrel chasing and lots more besides.
Each morning she wakes Bill, fetches his favourite slippers and then the two go for a walk, whatever the weather. After this Doris would do a new trick – perfectly as you might expect. But then one morning, disaster! Doris discovers she’s bitten a huge hole in one of Bill’s slippers. Panic! How will he react? Doris decides that there’s only one way to deal with this: off she dashes and hides the evidence so that nobody will ever know what she’s done. Or will they? Up comes another dog wanting to know what Doris is doing,

followed by several others all saying that they’ve done things much worse: one neighbourhood hound gobbled a large part of the sofa, another stole a string of sausages, a third caused a fire. Having heard all these confessions Doris hurries back to Bill and explains about the slipper and Bill is of course, ready to forgive her.

This engaging tale ends with a fun visual twist that will delight young listeners, and at the same time, remind them (and adult readers aloud) that we do not need to be perfect to be loved.