Meet Woof and Quack and Woof and Quack in Winter by Jamie Swenson

Lizzie Nolan is our guest blogger for this post. She's a Senior Librarian in Youth Services at the San José Public Library. Under the great inspiration of this very blog she helped start a mock Odyssey award blog for great childrens’ audiobooks at Ears on the Odyssey.

Woof and Quack are a classic odd couple. Woof isn’t like most dogs, and Quack isn’t like most ducks. Woof doesn’t want to play Fetch and Duck doesn’t want to fly south for winter.

In the mold of the Elephant and Piggie series, young readers will find comfort in these goofballs friends. Meet Woof and Quack and Woof & Quack in Winter have straightforward plots that are offset with just the right amount of silliness. The duo will play fetch with a banana or a cake instead of a ball or build a “snow duck” and a “sand dog” instead of snowman.

Both books do repeat words, phrases and sentence structure to help readers. In the panel below, the opposites of throwing and fetching are mirrored with the sentences “Woof threw the banana” and “Duck fetched the banana.”

The illustrations are cartoony, multicolored and illustrate the action of the plot. The drawings have bright colors, big expressions and thick black outlines that are eye catching to young readers. The background color changes when a new idea to the plot is introduced but stays the same when the idea in the panel isn’t resolved.

In this sequence of a cake falling, wobbling, and splatting the illustrator uses different background colors and literal drawings to convey meaning. Though the meaning of the plot could be understood with the illustrations alone, the words could prove to be more difficult to decode. They are written in a large typeface and but with different fonts and a vertical angle.

One of the most interesting design choices is the word bubbles. The color of Duck’s words are green while Woof’s are purple. Like Mo Willems says of his clever Elephant and Piggie fans, many readers will be quick to spot that Woof’s collar is purple and Duck’s face is green. This color coded dialogue serves as a clue to readers on how word bubbles function. The word bubbles have white backgrounds that help it stand apart with each colorful page change.

On the one hand, the use of color is fun and fast paced. On the other hand, it feels at times like too much is happening for a beginning reader. The constantly changing background could be too hectic and information overload for reader just learning to read. And color blind readers might find all the changes overwhelming and confusing. Woof & Quack in Winter in particularly with its’ snow falling and beach scenes feel busy in this trim size and could be a lot to visually digest for beginners.

This is a bold book with a lot happening to grab the young readers’ attention, but this year’s Geisel Committee will have to decide if one of these Woof & Quack reads will be deemed the most supportive for young readers.