Liddy LOVES "Go Dog Go!"

My mom gave me this book a while ago, before Lydia was even born I think. I had no recollection of it, but she told me that I LOVED this as a kid. It was packed away with all of the other non-board books until Lydia no longer wanted to eat the pages. With the move to her big girl room, I have been able to put ALL of her books on her dresser and at some point, Go Dog Go made it's way into the bedtime book rotation.

I was surprised at first because it doesn't rhyme like most Seuss books. What it does do is repeat the same few words over and over again, often building relationships between words through comparisons such as over, under, in and out. Lydia is right at that age where she is able to practice some of these concepts. She finds one of something and asks "where other at?" She crawls under something and says "I under!" I am hearing her use more of these in, out, above, below type words since we have been reading the book.

Boy, oh boy have we been reading the book! She asks for it EVERY night. Sometimes several times a night! She pretty much has it memorized, or at least understands the concepts the pictures are showing. So tonight, I started dropping some selective words..... "The little dog is going (IN). The big dog is going (OUT)" and she picked them right up and said them while I pointed to the word. I know she isn't really reading them, but it became a game. Hopefully enough times of me pointing to a word and her guessing it from the picture and eventually she might notice a pattern in the shapes of the letters, etc.

Maybe I am getting ahead of myself. Either way. It is a fun read with some great illustrations. Like these of the dogs sleeping (notice that one dog is awake) and the dogs waking up (notice one dog is asleep)! Finally, because it doesn't build to a climax or follow a logical progression, it doesn't matter when Lydia flips too many pages at once.

Regardless of how much we read, we always end up at a "dog party. A big dog party!" Such a great Dr. Seuss idea. Dogs in party hats in a tree. I think this would be a FABULOUS party theme... A Go Dog Go, Dog Party! Could you imagine? Dogs in party hats, Dogs in race cars, other silly Seuss touches. Hmmmmm. Sounds like a boy party to me, so I may have to hold onto it for now. For now, I just want to share this book with you if you haven't read it to your kids and to thank my mom for introducing me to it...TWICE!