Gracen Sheni
Just read the sample... It brought back great childhood memories!! Thanks, Penguin Random House LLC, for restoring the book to its original rendition.
Jenny Teets
I have been in love with the poky little puppy since 76'. By in love, I mean obsessed. :-) I am so happy to have it on my tablet now and with such vibrant colors! I love the write up in the back of the virtual boom about the author and illustrator. I love, love, love it! Thank you. And the price was totally reasonable. :-)
5 people found this review helpful
Michael Kepler
Short of finding a very old copy in good shape, this is as close as you can get to the original book, at least in terms of the illustrations. I haven't been able to pinpoint the year the printed book was edited, with several illustrations removed, most notably the puppies running across the bridge and the black spider going down the hill, and the whole layout altered. Oddly, if you view this in the "original pages" mode, you will get the edited version, but if you view it in the "flowing text" mode, you get what appears to be all of the original illustrations. Nonetheless, it would be virtually impossible to re-create the original layout of the book, although you can get pretty close by increasing the text a couple of steps. I have long suspected the the spider illustration was removed because it was deemed "too scary". However, I had the original form of the book as a child and find myself less afraid of spiders than most people I know. I can think of no valid editorial reason to remove the other missing illustrations, and am left to assume that it was simply done to save money in printing. The flow of the book, particularly the awkward pagination at some points, suffers in the edited version, and generations of children have been robbed of the chance to see all of Gustaf Tenggren's delightful and beautiful illustrations. There was a symmetry to the presentation of each iteration of the puppies' excursions beyond the fence, with each creature they observe going down or up the hill illustrated on an individual page along with the relevant text. Removing the spider breaks that symmetry and ruins the rhythm of the storytelling process. This book has been criticized for being confusing or even incoherent as a morality play, but such matters have not been very deeply troubling to generations of preschoolers who simply enjoy the cute puppies and relate to the delights they take in both adventure and dessert. They get that the Poky Puppy is not behaving well when he takes more than his share, and that he ends up with some negative consequences for it. They don't do the math that tells more jaded readers that the message is that "pokyness pays". But frankly, his "pokyness" is also heroic, as it demonstrates that a richer adventure can be found by those who wander rather than run with the pack. The other puppies may not have noticed all of the fascinating creatures along the way if they had not been searching for the prodigal sibling. If anything, it is a gentle and subliminal introduction the the ambiguities of morality, which I contend is more healthful than the artificially all bad or all good characters that inhabit most children's literature, and grown-up literature as well.
14 people found this review helpful