London, HarperCollins, 2013, 189p
It's lovely to be back reading children's fiction after my half term of heavy and historical drama.
Stick Dog is a funny, adorable junior fiction book, similar in style to the Wimpy Kid books. Here, the protagonist is a strag dog, who teams up with his canine friends to gatecrash a barbeque at the local park. Together, they plot to get past the human family to the sizzling hamburgers. The novel is full of misguided planning, distracting squirrels and pretty substandard illustrations.
Watson professes from the first page that he cannot draw. His characters are all stick people / animals and the other pictures are pretty basic, but I felt this added to the book - it's not always about the details, but about getting the story across, which Watson perfects. And anyway, as long as you can differentiate between the characters, drawings don't matter too much.
Stick Dog is the sensible one in his gang - each of his friends are uniquely quirky, occassionally foolish and always hungry. Actually, this book really made me crave a hamburger!
This is a great crossover between aniamal stories and comedy - a perfect way to ease myself back into teenage literature.
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