The Poky Little Puppy

Janette Sebring Lowrey's The Poky Little Puppy is a bedtime story for 5 year olds about five puppies who dig their way out and go exploring.

What happens

Off they go through the meadow, down the road, over the bridge and up the hill. Then they count themselves at the top. One, two, three, four. Somebody is missing.

He's always missing. While the others charge about, the poky little puppy is down at the bottom of the hill with his nose to the ground, working out what he can smell.

What he can smell is pudding. Rice pudding, to be exact. So home they all race, as fast as they can go.

That's where it goes wrong, because their mother knows perfectly well who has been digging holes. No pudding. Straight to bed.

And then it happens again the next day. And the next.

Reading it out loud is the whole pleasure. The same journey comes round every time, in the same order, with the same lovely nonsense on the way down the hill (roly-poly, pell-mell, tumble-bumble). Your reader will be joining in by the second go. Small children love knowing exactly what is coming next, and this one gives them that and then gives it to them again.

There's a puzzle tucked inside the pattern, too. The poky puppy somehow never ends up as hungry as his brothers and sisters do. Children work out why long before anyone spells it out, and being five and figuring that out for yourself is very satisfying indeed.

The puddings deserve a mention on their own. Rice pudding, then chocolate custard, then strawberry shortcake. If your reader gets peckish at bedtime, you've been warned!

It's short, it's soothing, and the last turn of it is fairer than you might expect.

What to read next

If you've got a reader who likes an animal who can't quite behave, The Saggy Baggy Elephant is in the library too. A parrot tells Sooki the elephant that his ears are too big, his nose is much too big and his skin is baggy and saggy, and poor Sooki sets about trying to fix himself.