“The Trouble With Dogs!”

Kate’s two dogs, brought home from the Rescue Centre, couldn’t be more different. Rosy is large, soft, patient and ‘comfortable to lie on as an old sofa’. Dave, on the other hand, is small and wild, always up to mischief. Puddles on the floor and holey tights are bad enough but when Dave jumps up on a guest’s lap and wolfs down her cupcake right off the plate, Dad decides it’s time for action and calls in the Brigadier from Pup Breakers. Sporting shades, moustache and cap, the Brigadier, with his loud voice and huge slip chain, seems to lick Dave into shape. However, in the end it is the irrepressible Dave and a quiet word from Kate that persuade the Brigadier to change his ways.

Bob Graham’s illustrations are always a pleasure to behold and show us so much more than the written story. There’s the empty cup and trainers under the sofa, Kate’s pencils and drawings left on the floor, dad’s underpants riding up above his jeans, mum’s tattoo and nose ring, and abandoned soft toys playing a game of their own. Economically drawn and painted and deceptively simple, with a thickening of a line here and a well placed dot there, he shows us the full gamut of emotions in both his human and animal characters.