The hospital dog by Julia Donaldson. Illus. by Sara Ogilvie

With a lively dog bouncing happily from one ill child to another over pages filled with colour and movement, verve and laughter, children will readily pick up and read about Dot, the hospital dog.

Her owner, Rose takes her swimming each day - then they hop onto the bus to get to the hospital where Dot spends her time being a companion in the Wallaby Ward, full of children. Rose and Dot love their work and this is reflected in the wonderful rhyming lines, impelling readers to predict the last word of each pair of lines, adding some of their own as they reread the story, while the sometimes repeated lines:

Here is a dog, a Dalmatian called Dot
Is she quite ordinary? NO SHE’S NOT!

form a refrain that children can easily learn and repeat while the story is read.

The stunning illustrations show the range of children in the ward; a bored teenager, a child without hair, kids on crutches or bed bound, children in wheelchairs, kids who are unsure or unhappy, and Dot visits each helping in some way to make them smile.

I love the depiction of the hesitant mother and toddler, both wary of the dog, but seduced by Dot's enthusiasm and love. The sting in the tale where a deaf boy is about to cross the road without looking brings Dot's abilities to the fore, putting herself in the place of the boy, taken to a different sort of hospital.  A wonderful resolution sees the Wallaby Ward children returning the love shown them by Dot as they visit her.

A warm hearted story, children will eagerly talk of their visits to hospital or the vet with their animals, opening the classroom conversation to illness and hospitals. For some who are hesitant about going into hospital, this book provides a model of just what a hospital is and who is in them, and shows the range of things which best children causing them to be taken into a hospital.

The illustrations depict all the sorts of things children might see in a hospital, encouraging them to talk of charts, sanitiser, doctors and nurses. The comparison with Dot in her own form of hospital, recovering from her own accident, is a great lead in to calm children’s inexperience.

But above all The hospital dog is funny and lively, entertaining and absorbing as Dot careers around the hospital, making everyone smile.

By the same author and illustrator who produced The detective dog (2018).

Themes: Hospitals, Accidents, Illness, Dogs.

Fran Knight