The Adventures of Sunny & The Chocolate Dog: Sunny & The Chocolate Dog Go to the Beach

Sunny, a protective golden lab, is eager to bring her little sister Cloudy to the beach for Cloudy’s first ever swim. Of course, getting into the big rough waves can be a little intimidating even when it looks like a lot of fun. So Sunny, keeping safety in mind, must carefully coax her young charge into the water and teach her what a delight swimming actually is. Kids are likely to have a strong affinity for Sunny and Cloudy as they think of times when they were scared to try something new or times when they were called upon to help someone younger than themselves. Kent Hammerstrom’s illustrations have a low-tech appeal, more so in his delightful depictions of the dogs than in his overly caricatured humans. The book is published by “Sunny & The Chocolate Dog, LLC” and it would have been interesting to see what a good editor from a more established imprint could have done with Susie Neimark’s story (besides correcting a typo on page 46). Neimark’s style could reasonably be described as long-winded as she takes her time detailing and sometimes restating everything that happens on this seminal seashore excursion. But at the same time, it’s nice to see text that isn’t boiled to a minimum word count and forcibly hammered into the sing-songy rhyme scheme that’s all too common in many children’s books. (Ages 3 to 7) –John Moe