In Big Dog Little Dog, “a bedtime story”, click here! a large and a small dog with diverse tastes in winter holiday activities, cars (and how to drive them) and, well, taste (one eats greens, the other eats the beets) live together. Now I don’t mind this a bit. Nor do I mind the fact that one plays flute, the other the tuba nor do I even mind that these dogs can talk and use the phone and do everything human beings can.
What I’m bothered about is the bird and the beds.
At the centre of this small story is a dilemma. Two dogs, one tall, one short are tired at the end of their winter sporting day so go to a small hotel where one goes upstairs to his room and gets the big bed, the other goes to his room downstairs and has a small bed. (I’ve suddenly had a flash in my head along the lines of how there are some really massively important political things going on in the world and here’s me going on about children’s books. I mean hell I’m not even slagging off plumbers…..
The dilemma isn’t really at the centre of the book anyway, it’s kind of the final quarter or third. A bit where the story verges away from being about how one dog likes one thing, the other another and concentrates instead on how this hotel has only a room with a big bed and one with a small bed. And wouldn’t you know it, they’ve been ill advised in their choice of rooms.
The weird thing is the problem isn’t resolved by the dogs themselves, the Bird has the Word on this matter. This is a bird which until now has very much been a by-stander in this tale. He tries (unsuccessfully) to hitch a ride with then when they drive out to the mountains, he’s there at the window watching both of them fail to get a good night’s sleep, but what is his relationship to them. And if Ted likes one thing and Fred another, what does the bird like?
The bird isn’t even representing a middle way – OK he says don’t make big problems out of little problems but even that’s tricky to map onto the dogs themselves and surely as a support character his role is just to highlight / cast light on the central issue of the story – that one dog likes one thing and another likes another.
Now I know what’s you’re saying. Big dog likes the big bed, little dog likes the little bed, but this isn’t a preference thing – the bed issue is a physical barrier that needs to be hurdled – an issue to be resolved and not just a matter of taste.
Maybe my biggest concern is that up until this finale, Fred and Ted seem intelligent, talented, well rounded dogs with a vital connection to the world around them, varied and active interests and a fantastic friendship to be admired by everyone because they don’t simply tolerate each other’s preferences, they positively embrace them and let the other excel in his own lifestyle choices. The beds and the birds reduce them to two dumb animals who can’t even match their sizes to the furniture around them.
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