Stick Dog

Stick Dog by Tom Watson is a silly, chatty story for 7 year olds about five stray dogs who REALLY want a hamburger.

What happens

First you have to make a deal with the narrator. He can't draw (his art teacher scrunches up her face at his dogs) and you're not allowed to give him any trouble about it. He's also going to tell the story his way, which isn't the way his English teacher likes.

Deal? Good. This is the first Stick Dog book, so it's where you meet everybody.

Stick Dog lives in a big empty pipe under Highway 16. He sleeps on an old sofa cushion and chews Frisbees, and he reckons he's got it pretty good.

His four friends are always dropping by. There's Poo-Poo the poodle (it's short for POO-dle, apparently). There's Stripes the Dalmatian, who's covered in spots. Then there's Karen the dachshund and Mutt, who is a mutt.

It's summer, the wind is blowing the right way and somebody at Picasso Park is barbecuing. That's the whole story really. Five rumbling tummies and one family picnic.

Getting there takes a while. Poo-Poo spots a squirrel, takes an acorn to the head and starts asking if anybody has a cannon. Stripes mistakes a barbecue fork for a double-bladed sword. Karen goes missing, and the others are planning her memorial before anyone thinks to look by her favourite bin.

Then come the plans, and they're gloriously bad. One involves Poo-Poo driving the family's car. Can he drive? No. Another needs a cape, a rope and the roof of a gazebo.

Stick Dog is the sensible one, but he's so kind about it. He never tells his friends a plan is terrible. He finds something nice to say and quietly moves them on.

The narrator chats to your reader the whole way through. He stops to explain what a dilemma is (overcooked green beans or cauliflower) and tells you about being caught with bubble gum in the library. If you've got a reader who likes a book that talks to them, they'll probably feel like they've made a friend.

Not every idea is one you'd want copied. Mutt's plan is to bite the humans' ankles, and Karen's is to jump off a cliff so the family feels sorry for them. Stick Dog steers them away from both, very politely.

What to read next

If the plans are their favourite part, there are more in Stick Dog Crashes a Party. The same five dogs are back at Picasso Park, and this time it's a wedding buffet they're after.