Cleo is a tough city dog from Queens. Tricky is a coyote who lives out in the lonely desert of Utah. Their paths cross when Cleo is adopted by a young boy named Martin, who takes him into the wilds of Utah on a camping trip. As it explores the themes of loyalty and ownership, this spunky picture book also proves that love can bloom in the desert. Full color.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 2?Everything about this book is warm. It's an engaging story with illustrations rendered in rich, glowing colors that reveal character, action, and setting. Every painting is embraced by a vivid frame that playfully echoes the narrative with patterns and designs combining traditional American Indian motifs with a few modern flourishes. What could be described as a simple plot is, upon reflection, a rather complex weave of elements. An abandoned dog finds a home with a boy and his mother in New York City. Just as Cleo adjusts to the comforts and constraints of hearth, home, and family love, she finds herself caged and crowded into an airplane's baggage compartment enroute to Utah. A visit with the boy's sheep rancher uncle provides the pup with a shocking new landscape, strange desert smells and sights, and an improbable new relationship with a coyote. Here Levy departs boldly and successfully from her dog-meets-boy story and extends the breadth of this tale. Cleo and the coyote ("Tricky") are wary, curious, attracted, and-although they go separate ways-ultimately connected. The tone is unsentimental: Cleo is a wisecracking little city dog, with her sentences clipped to phrases to produce snappy rhythms (but her face is all sweetness). And as the plaintive answering howls of Cleo and Tricky tell us, this is, for all the tough talk, a tale of love. Wonderful for sharing up close or with a group.?Susan Powers, Rock Creek Forest Elementary School, Chevy Chase, MD
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
An abandoned street pooch is taken in by a young boy, Martin, and named Cleopatra (she was found in Queens, New York). Cleo is a female Philip Marlowe in fur, delivering lots of snappy lines--``I lived on hot dogs. Hate the name. Love the taste''--before she travels to Utah, where she has a run-in with a coyote (``Back off,'' she growls at one point. ``I taste worse than a week old bagel''). The two become fast friends, swapping stories, philosophizing, saving each other's life. However, at a moment when Cleo must choose between staying with Martin or hoofing it with her coyote friend, Cleo opts for the former. It will be hard for young readers to understand why; much more page space is given over to Cleo's bonding with the coyote than with Martin. Security triumphs over adventure? Bryer's primitive illustrations are busy and attractive, shifting into western motifs when the story moves to Utah, but her brush can't bring balance to the text. (Picture book. 5-9) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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