Bone Dog

Bone Dog

Author: Eric Rohmann

Illustrator: Eric Rohmann

Genre: Fantasy and Science Fiction

Grade Level: K to 4^th grade

“A promise made under a full moon cannot be broken.”

How would you feel if the dog that you grow up with suddenly leaves you to be with the stars? It is one of the questions that no pet owner wants to hear. However, poor Gus had to go through the reality of losing his beloved dog, Lucy. While looking at the full moon, Lucy promises “I’ll always be with you.” And soon after that, she passes away. Gus is now alone and does his chores even if he does not feel like it. Halloween comes around and Gus does not feel like trick-or-treating but he puts on his skeleton costume anyway and goes to the graveyard. Gus stands with his bag full of candies on the graveyard when all of a sudden, he is surrounded by dancing skeletons around him. The skeletons ask him to dance and sing but when Gus reveals that he is actually a boy. He becomes their prey. Just as he is about to be attacked. Lucy, a bone dog, comes to his rescue. The skeletons all laugh at Lucy because she is small and outnumbered. She then howls from the top of the hill. All the real live dogs run towards the graveyards and chases away the skeletons. Lucy then sits next to Gus under full moon promising yet again that she will always be with him. No matter what.

The book has a dust cover that features Gus and Lucy sitting under the full moon. The cover too has the same illustration as a dust cover. The clever design of this book is the frontispiece and the title page. The frontispiece is a tracing paper that features Lucy holding a bone when she is alive. You can clearly see the title page behind with the author name and the title of the book. And on the same space when you flip that page, the title page too has Lucy holding a bone BUT not so alive. I thought that was well thought of style. The book has a border around the pages. Instead of having two different illustrations on both the pages, this book takes up two pages to complete an illustration. The text is accompanied by the illustration and is quite short and sweet. Some of the pages do not have any text but the illustration speaks for itself. 

Thoughts:

Ah, how I felt like crying when I first read the few pages. It is dangerous to read this book when you have an ill puppy at home. Anyway, this book was amazing. You can clearly feel the connection and the deep love between the pet and the owner. The illustration is cartoon-like but it’s perfect for young children. The text as well whenever the skeletons speak. It has that curly text that looks like it a skeleton. This will be a great book for a teacher to teach students about keeping a promise and also unconditional love.