Charlie Is My Darling

by Malachy Doyle, Stephen Lambert (Illustrator)

Meet Charlie - a very cheeky little dog! Charlie loves to race and to chase, but once he's off and running can anyone catch him?

Genres: Animals

32 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2008

About the author

Malachy Doyle is the author of Antonio on the Other Side of the World, Getting Smaller and many other books for children. He lives in Donegal, Ireland.

Reviews

[Rena Sherwood]

I used to be owned by a naughty white dog very much like Charlie. The cover of Charlie begging for a walk looked very much like Hugo (although he had floppy ears) so I couldn't resist checking this book out at the Internet Archive.

Artistically, this is quite an achievement. No idea how they managed to get the text to curve about as Charlie careens around the park and up a hill. The full color illustrations have that wonderful balance between realism and whimsy that marks a special children's book artist.

The text is not as good as the illustrations. It has a sing-song repetition bordering on poetry. I found it a little annoying ... although, granted, I'm about 50 years older than the target audience.

There is an underlying story to this chasing the loose dog story. It's also about a young boy making friends with an old neighbor. This used to happen a lot when I was a kid. However, I don't think it happens so much anymore.

Although written for the UK market, I think kids in America and Australia will have absolutely no problem understanding it.