How to Behave at a Dog Show

K-Gr 2—Didactic Julia Fitzgerald is at it again, this time she is instructing readers how to behave at a dog show as she prepares her own pet to participate in one. The narrative takes children through the application process, little Rexie's competition preparation, and the team's efforts to win a ribbon. Unfortunately for Julia, things don't go as planned; Rexie gets dyed, skunked, and generally misbehaves while her little brother Charlie and their neighbor friends create some chaos of their own. Though her perfect plans are thwarted, Julia learns to set different standards—more reasonable and childlike ones—for best of show. Ross's Photoshop digital images, vibrant against mostly white pages, have the charm of dynamic pen and watercolor sketches and provide the irony in the story; readers can see the mess and tumult while they read Julia's calm directives. As a read-aloud there is some dissonance as Julia's narration breaks from expository to dialogic without quotation marks, changes to the font size, or other visual indications; her increasing upset is indicated only by an exclamation point and a few capitalizations for emphasis. It seems that readers can't get enough of bossy yet well-meaning girl characters, and Julia fits that subgenre perfectly.