| "A likely
candidate for classic status." --Selma G. Lanes, Harper's
"William Steig has
created an engaging hero, a dog with a heart of gold, nerves of
steel, and the varied talents of Renaissance man. Dominic sallies
forth to see the world and to earn gratitude and acclaim for his
generosity, his courage, and his prowess at absolutely everything to
which he turns his paw -- including the foiling of a dastardly troop
of villains who have been preying on the community . . . a good story
for reading aloud." --Bulletin of the Center for Children's
Books
Awards
National Book Award Finalist
ALA Notable Book
Horn Book
Fanfare
Christopher Award for Juvenile Fiction
Reviews
Horn Book Magazine -
*starred review
In his first novel for children, the artist-author introduces an
ingenious and ingratiating hero, Dominic, a mutt of nondescript
ancestry with a need for adventure and the nose to find it. Setting
forth on his quest with a unique bundle of equipment including his
"assortment of hats which he liked to wear, not for warmth or
for shade or to shield him from rain, but for their various effects
-- rakish, dashing, solemn, or martial," Dominic at once shows
himself to be a flexible creature of many modes -- today a veritable
D'Artagnan of dogdom, tomorrow a canine Quixote. In the best
tradition of the picaresque romance, he encounters a succession of
intriguing personalities - a witch-alligator with "many more
teeth than were necessary for ordinary dental purposes," the
thoroughly wicked Doomsday Gang, an invalid pig with geriatric
problems, and a regular sleeping beauty of a dog lying "in a
room where candles flickered and moonlight streamed through
stained-glass windows." Virtue unabashedly triumphs over
villainy, gallantry over greed, and love over all as the tale ends
in true fashion with Dominic -- accompanied by his adoring companion
- anticipating new adventures. Similarities to other children's
books may be discerned -- Lloyd Alexander's Marvelous
Misadventures of Sebastian (Dutton), Maurice Sendak's Higglety
Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More to Life (Harper), even
Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows -- as well as to
familiar folk-tale motifs. Yet such comparisons are observations
about rather than explanations of literary indebtedness. For, the
interweaving of both folk and literary traditions is accomplished
with a jaunty, tongue-in-cheek sense of exaggeration, including the
outrageously logical series of explications for apparent misnomers.
A singular blend of naiveté and sophistication, comic commentary
and philosophizing, the narrative handles situational clichés with
humor and flair -- perhaps because of the author's felicitous turn
of phrase, his verbal cartooning, and his integration of text and
illustrations. A chivalrous and optimistic tribute to gallantry and
romance.
Kirkus Reviews - *starred
review
"Dominic was a lively one, always up to something." And
so on page one the expansive hound leaves home "to see more of
the world." What follows is a series of wide open encounters:
with a 100-year-old pig named Bartholomew Badger who repays the
dog's kindness by leaving him a fortune, a bereft boar named Barney
Swain on whom Dominic bestows most of the burdensome treasure, a
goose named Matilda Fox whom he rescues from the nefarious Doomsday
Gang (and is rewarded with a wonderful treatise on the relative
advantages of walking, flying, and swimming), a mouse named Manfred
Lyon whose trompe l'oeil painting outwits the Doomsdays in another
episode, and others with consonantly incongruous names. All assemble
at last for Barney's grand wedding to Pearl Sweeney, then go on to
defeat the Doomsday Gang who set fire to the hall while the guests
are drinking to "unending love and the eternal brotherhood of
the entire animal kingdom." An optimist who "hurries
toward every development" and shares his good fortune with
careless cheer, Dominic has his contemplative and melancholy moments
too, where Steig achieves a beautiful balance of the unaffectedly
sublime and the touchingly ridiculous: after burying Mr. Badger,
"Dominic went out for a walk and did a lot of thinking"
until "he felt he understood the secret of life. But in the
light of morning, when he woke up, his understanding of the secret
had disappeared with the stars." Later Dominic plays his
piccolo for tipsy, carousing mice on a moonlit night that becomes
"too much for Dominic's overflowing soul. . . . He raised his
head and, straining toward infinity, howled out the burden of his
love and longing in sounds more meaningful than words." Finally,
in a mystical garden, Dominic finds the object of his vague longing
--
a beautiful black dog named Evelyn who has been waiting for him in
an enchanted sleep. This borrowing from tradition strikes us as the
one false note in the whole adventure, but Evelyn redeems herself
and Steig when she urges Dominic, "Let's leave right away.
I've been here so long I want to be out in the world again." Dominic
realized he was at the beginning of a great adventure." To know
Dominic is to share his high spirits and the clean perfection of
Steig's prose enlarges the pleasure. |
Dominic