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All rights reserved.The Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown (1992)
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The Sailor Dog Needs an Editor! Badly.Review created: 01/04/07
by: Jellyn -- a member of Epinions
Pros:
The illustrations aren't bad.
The illustrations aren't bad.
Cons:
Plot makes no sense. Simple writing mistakes throughout. Technically incorrect. Illogical stuff everywhere.
Plot makes no sense. Simple writing mistakes throughout. Technically incorrect. Illogical stuff everywhere.
The Sailor Dog is a Little Golden Book by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams. And it's horrible.
Just thought I should get that out of the way up front.
Plot
Scuppers was a sailor dog, born at sea in the middle of a storm. But he grew up on a farm, for some reason. When he finished growing up, he wanted to go back to sea. So he sets out to do that.
He found an airplane, but it went up in the sky and he didn't want to do that. He wanted to go on the sea. Then he found a submarine, but it was going under the sea, not on it. Then he found a car, but it was going over land. Getting the idea yet?
Scuppers doesn't want to go by train either, because "Scuppers was a sailor. He wanted to go to sea. So Scuppers went over the hills and far away until he came to the sea." But, wait a minute.. didn't he just run into a submarine earlier? Was that the submarines-only sea?
"The ship was about to go over the sea. It blew all its whistles. 'All aboard!' they called. 'All ashore that are going ashore!' 'All aboard!'" Yet right after this, he's all alone on this ship. It's not a ship; it's a boat. It's a one-dog sailboat with no one else on board. I seriously doubt it even has a whistle. What the heck?
So Scuppers has gone out to sea in his little "ship" and he has his own little room in the boat and he throws the anchor over in the middle of the night so he can go to sleep. This must be some really good anchor to anchor a little sailboat in the middle of the ocean.
"Next morning he was shipwrecked."
No wonder!
The beach has driftwood and a rusty box. The box conveniently has tools in it. And somewhere he finds a lot of bricks. You would've thought bricks would've sunk and not washed up on a beach, but luckily for Scuppers, these bricks must float. He makes a house, complete with chimney.
He catches some fish. He sleeps. Then it occurs to him if he can build a house, he can fix the boat. So he fixes the boat. Then he lands somewhere and buys all new clothes and eventually sets out to sea again.
Got all that?
Illustrations
The illustrations are sort of anthropomorphic animals and reminiscent of Richard Scarry. There's lots of extra things going on in many of the pictures.
Not that they help explain the confusion of the story.
My Thoughts
This book was in serious need of an editor. Maybe children's books can have plotholes and take some liberties with reality, but there has to be some internal logic to the plot. You don't run across a submarine, then have to go over hills and far away to find a ship.
I don't know a whole lot about ships and nautical stuff, but I do know more than this author apparently. That is not a ship!
And did you notice how I couldn't stick to one tense in my plot summary? I'll blame that entirely on the fact that the author didn't either. Scuppers did this, now he's doing that. He did that, now he's doing this. There are a whole lot of "Now"s in there.
Bottom Line
No, no, no. Just don't do it.
Details
Copyright 1953. That's no excuse!
Just thought I should get that out of the way up front.
Plot
Scuppers was a sailor dog, born at sea in the middle of a storm. But he grew up on a farm, for some reason. When he finished growing up, he wanted to go back to sea. So he sets out to do that.
He found an airplane, but it went up in the sky and he didn't want to do that. He wanted to go on the sea. Then he found a submarine, but it was going under the sea, not on it. Then he found a car, but it was going over land. Getting the idea yet?
Scuppers doesn't want to go by train either, because "Scuppers was a sailor. He wanted to go to sea. So Scuppers went over the hills and far away until he came to the sea." But, wait a minute.. didn't he just run into a submarine earlier? Was that the submarines-only sea?
"The ship was about to go over the sea. It blew all its whistles. 'All aboard!' they called. 'All ashore that are going ashore!' 'All aboard!'" Yet right after this, he's all alone on this ship. It's not a ship; it's a boat. It's a one-dog sailboat with no one else on board. I seriously doubt it even has a whistle. What the heck?
So Scuppers has gone out to sea in his little "ship" and he has his own little room in the boat and he throws the anchor over in the middle of the night so he can go to sleep. This must be some really good anchor to anchor a little sailboat in the middle of the ocean.
"Next morning he was shipwrecked."
No wonder!
The beach has driftwood and a rusty box. The box conveniently has tools in it. And somewhere he finds a lot of bricks. You would've thought bricks would've sunk and not washed up on a beach, but luckily for Scuppers, these bricks must float. He makes a house, complete with chimney.
He catches some fish. He sleeps. Then it occurs to him if he can build a house, he can fix the boat. So he fixes the boat. Then he lands somewhere and buys all new clothes and eventually sets out to sea again.
Got all that?
Illustrations
The illustrations are sort of anthropomorphic animals and reminiscent of Richard Scarry. There's lots of extra things going on in many of the pictures.
Not that they help explain the confusion of the story.
My Thoughts
This book was in serious need of an editor. Maybe children's books can have plotholes and take some liberties with reality, but there has to be some internal logic to the plot. You don't run across a submarine, then have to go over hills and far away to find a ship.
I don't know a whole lot about ships and nautical stuff, but I do know more than this author apparently. That is not a ship!
And did you notice how I couldn't stick to one tense in my plot summary? I'll blame that entirely on the fact that the author didn't either. Scuppers did this, now he's doing that. He did that, now he's doing this. There are a whole lot of "Now"s in there.
Bottom Line
No, no, no. Just don't do it.
Details
Copyright 1953. That's no excuse!
Review ID: 10000000002662339
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