The moral of this story is clear: your life is your own, and don’t let anyone else rule it. Mister Dog belongs to himself. The boy belongs to himself. They both act on free will. If the boy can be easily convinced to come and do chores then, hey, that’s just Mister Dog’s good fortune. Ben Fogle is a broadcaster, adventurer and co-author of the Mr Dog fiction series, where friendly Mr Dog meets and makes friends with lots of different animals.

This book is really cute and a little weird at the same time, but a good weird! A warning to some parents, it is like Curious George and has animals smoking tobacco pipes lol. Margaret Wise Brown wrote my favorite childhood book Home For a Bunny. She also wrote Goodnight Moon which is one of my favorite books to read to my kids. Surely I would love a book about Mister Dog the pipe smoking dog who belongs to himself! Mister Dog is about Crispin's Crispian (aka Mister Dog) who belongs to no one. He befriends a little boy who belongs to no one and they decide to live together in the dog's 2 story doghouse. (I want to sleep in Mister Dog's bed, it just looks so comfy!)But the best part is when we are told that Mister Dog is "a conservative". That is a direct quote. And note the italics. It is a word that Margaret Wise Brown wishes to define. “He liked everything at the right time – dinner at dinner time, lunch at lunchtime, breakfast in time for breakfast, and sunrise at sunrise, and sunset at sunset. And at bedtime he liked everything in its own place – the cup in the saucer, the chair under the table, the stars in the heavens, the moon in the sky, and himself in his own little bed.” Note the direct quote. Why would Mister Dog say he wanted “to get his poor dog a bone”? He should say “to get my poor dog a bone”. Who edited this stuff? Anyway, then the little boy prances off happily with Crispin/Crispian, blissfully unaware that soon he will be tidying a dog’s living room. They make dinner at Mister Dog’s house and each of them, in Brown’s words “chewed it up and swallowed it into his little fat stomach”. Then boy and dog sleep in side-by-side beds. It seems there are people who are against this book due to the pipe smoking and the fact that a little boy goes home with the dog, etc., etc. It's a 1950's Golden Book with a pipe smoking dog. I'm not sure what folks really expect, but I do know that I expected a nice story at the heart of Mister Dog. Unfortunately, this book was a weird mess with one odd event after another. Indeed, Cesar was originally named ‘Mr Dog’, which despite its name was still very successful at the time. However, the fact that ‘Mr Dog’ clearly alienated bitches was a cause for concern for the manufacturers, and a cause for a comedy routine for Eddie Izzard. Eddie made fun at the way the makers of Mr Dog decided to rebrand their product to Cesar, claiming that small dogs weren’t exactly reminiscent of Roman Emperors. I’ve decided to take my next book in a slightly different direction. Picture this. A hairy, Republican nudist – no, it’s okay, stay with me – convinces a little homeless boy to come and sleep with him. It has a wonderful moral.”

For all of Margaret Wise Brown’s oddities, I think she knew how to tap into the brain of a child. The word “belong” resonated with me. As a child, I heard it often. I “belonged” to my parents and my friends “belonged” to theirs. “Who does such-and-such belong to?” adults would ask each other. This never sat well with me, for I felt that nobody owned me. This is the child-like mindset Brown exploits (and which Mister Dog then exploits with the little boy). The house is full of riddles and pitfalls. On top of everything else, Mr. Dog hunts everyone who enters his place. And after you realize what secrets the fat man keeps in his mansion, your escape will turn into real horror. The night at Mr. Dog’s house will be truly unforgettable for any intruder. The dog’s name is Crispin’s Crispian. We are told that “he was named Crispin’s Crispian because he belonged to himself”. Okay, so he answers to nobody. An admirable sentiment. But then, if his name is Crispin, why is he called Crispin’s Crispian? Why not Crispin’s Crispin? Where did the “a” come from? And if his name is Crispian, why is he not Crispian’s Crispian? He probably dreamed it up after a session on that pipe. Let me start by emphasizing the artwork of this book. While all Little Golden Books have a classic, nostalgic approach to drawings, the way that emotion is captured in this book in particular is enough to wreak emotional havoc (and it does.) For example: Revision Col 3 Collins at Home | Support for schools Home tutors Letts Revision Collins4Parents Collins Book Sale Revision for students

Then they went to a butcher shop – "to get his poor dog a bone," Crispian said. Now, since Crispin’s Crispian belonged to himself, he gave himself the bone and trotted home with it. Margaret loved animals. Most of her books have animals as characters in the story. She liked to write books that had a rhythm to them. Sometimes she would put a hard word into the story or poem. She thought this made children think harder when they are reading.