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juushikaTitle: A Dog So Small
Author: Philippa Pearce
Illustrator: Antony Maitland
Published: 1962
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 140
Total Page Count: 540,640
Text Number: 1997
Read Because: recommended by Rosamund after reading Strömgård's The Secret Cat; borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Our protagonist desperately wants a dog, but has no room to keep one in his family's London flat; when he's promised one anyway, what he receives is a picture of a chihuahua, which inspires him to conjure an imaginary pet. Great premise, and, though we don't get a ton of the imaginary dog, the relationship between boy and dog, the evocation of loneliness and the idealized companion, is excruciatingly tender, personal, and relatable; this was me with cats, before I had cats, and you better believe I got emotional about it. It reminds me, unexpectedly, of Wyndham's Chocky: imaginary friend as plot, seen through the external repercussions of an inner subjective reality; the use of omniscient PoV is fascinating, affecting an occasional distance from a profoundly internal and intimate experience, almost like it's giving the reader some breathing room. This is also a relic of its time, a snapshot of animal caretaking and British society which hasn't aged with particular grace; this echoes in a didactic ending of questionable effectiveness, shunning the inner world for the compromises of a normalized external reality; but, you see, I was Ben, and getting my flesh-and-blood cats was no compromise.
Author: Philippa Pearce
Illustrator: Antony Maitland
Published: 1962
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 140
Total Page Count: 540,640
Text Number: 1997
Read Because: recommended by Rosamund after reading Strömgård's The Secret Cat; borrowed from OpenLibrary
Review: Our protagonist desperately wants a dog, but has no room to keep one in his family's London flat; when he's promised one anyway, what he receives is a picture of a chihuahua, which inspires him to conjure an imaginary pet. Great premise, and, though we don't get a ton of the imaginary dog, the relationship between boy and dog, the evocation of loneliness and the idealized companion, is excruciatingly tender, personal, and relatable; this was me with cats, before I had cats, and you better believe I got emotional about it. It reminds me, unexpectedly, of Wyndham's Chocky: imaginary friend as plot, seen through the external repercussions of an inner subjective reality; the use of omniscient PoV is fascinating, affecting an occasional distance from a profoundly internal and intimate experience, almost like it's giving the reader some breathing room. This is also a relic of its time, a snapshot of animal caretaking and British society which hasn't aged with particular grace; this echoes in a didactic ending of questionable effectiveness, shunning the inner world for the compromises of a normalized external reality; but, you see, I was Ben, and getting my flesh-and-blood cats was no compromise.
