A welcome addition to the small number of Australian books with appeal to the very young, The Pocket Dogs will be an immediate favourite for storytime in libraries and kindergartens. This is a simpler text than many of Margaret Wild's stories, with a cast of three main characters: Mr Pockets and the two tiny dogs, Biff and Buff, who ride out each day in his coat pockets. Disaster strikes in the form of a hole in the right pocket, from which Biff falls into the scary world. Biff learns the hard way that he is not a basket dog, a toy-pram dog or a shopping-trolley dog, but a pocket dog. Stephen Michael King (Henry and Amy, Beetle Soup) brings an increasingly confident touch to depicting the daily round of the lovably eccentric Mr Pockets, the dogs and the people they meet. The characteristic blue tones of King's artwork deepen when poor Biff is most alone; a few spreads open up to spacious and idyllic scenes of water, grass and sky. 

C. 2000 Thorpe-Bowker and contributors

Tags: margaret wild