Thursday, March 25, 2010

Bailey's Day by Robert Haggerty


Product Details
Pub. Date: January 2010
Publisher: Outskirts Press, Inc.
Format: Paperback, 46pp
ISBN-13: 9781432745509
ISBN: 1432745506

Synopsis
Did you ever wonder what your dog does when you go to work? This is a children's book which tells the story of Bailey, a pointer, and what she does after her owner goes to work. Bailey is the narrator of the story, and tells of the adventures she goes on when her dad, a mailman, is gone for the day.

The book has illustrations and actual photos of Bailey on her adventures. She is quite a character.

My thoughts:
I received this book from Bostick Communications for review purposes, but I requested it because of my children and especially my daughter's love of dogs. I really thought it was a book she would enjoy reading and that I would enjoy sharing with her and I was not wrong.

Bailey is owned by a mail carrier in Arizona. Every day when her owner, or dad as she refers to him, goes to work she and her neighbor Frankie (who is a Dachshund who looks like a hot dog, thus the name) go exploring. They swim in the pool, eat tacos from a traveling vendor (in what we used to refer to in Las Vegas a a Roach Coach), see wild animals at the wash and then try to get home before her owner.

A nice touch at the end of this book was the photos of the authors own dog of the same name. It added something to the story to see that he wrote it about and for his own pet.

My husband and I lived for a number of years in Nevada and were dog owners. I recall writing my own story about them one summer. It was an unpublished story and is now lost among our boxes of things that have been moved multiple times since then. From reading this story I could feel how Bailey is a member of this family and is loved very much. My children enjoyed hearing about the adventures and seeing the illustrations and especially the photos of the real dog.

My one criticism of the book is that all the text is done in capital letters. As an elementary teacher this is something that bothers me especially from my time working with young and beginning readers. I'd much rather see the text done the way it is taught and that would make this book easier for children to read to themselves.

My son's school is doing a basket bingo event next month and his grade was asked to bring in donations of books to use as prizes. We made sure to be very careful when we read this book so that we could send it along to his school to be included as one of the prizes. This was another child's family will get to enjoy it as well!

Biography
Robert Haggerty has been a mailman for more than twenty years. This is his first children's book. Haggerty lives in Tucson, Arizona. You can find out more about the book and author at http://outskirtspress.com/Bailey

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