Grub's Pups

A gentle and warm book about pregnancy, birth and babies, made delightful by endearing characterisation and witty scenes from Sarah Warburton.

When Ruby’s dog Grub is about to become a dad, he misses his regular romps with Tilly, his friend next door. But Tilly, Billy’s dog, has got a tummy full of pups and she needs a lot of rest. Slowly and simply told, we feel the impatience of having to wait for the ‘something special’ to happen and we share the frustration and loneliness of Grub whose world is changing.

Siblings will identify with the difficulties surrounding new offspring and they will applaud the joyous ending where life does not exactly get back to normal but is even better. It’s just a pity that a text this sensitive was not able to describe the moment of birth a little more honestly. There is no necessity to be overly graphic, but I believe the description ‘then the puppies started to appear’ is not enough. It made the rather sweet heralding of the pups, ‘“One!” said Billy’s mum’, come across as a cop-out. Surely teachers and parents wouldn’t be squeamish over a bit of reality, or is it the constraints of co-editions which have held back this otherwise straightforward book?