Five Colour Dog Review

19 July 2017 by Christina Barker

This next book review is for ‘Five Colour Dog’. Read Christina and Taylors other book reviews ‘How Mouse Gave His Name to the First Year’, Cheeky Monkey, ‘Five Flower Horse’, ‘Silly Billy The Wise Goat’,  ‘Daughters of the Land God’ and ‘Big Red Rooster’.

 

Title: Five Colour Dog (Stories of animal sign series)

Author: Xue Lin

Reviewer: Christina Barker

On the front cover, Five Colour Dog is looking up at Princess Little Lotus as they walk happily together whilst she is banging a small drum.

At first glance I found the story a little weird. It is very magical and unexpected. It’s like a very shortened version of what seems to be a long story. I feel as though there is more to the story than is in the book and I am intrigued to know more. I guess this is because it is primarily aimed at children. A lot of young children love magic in a story and if your child enjoys magical things then this is the one for them. Although I did enjoy the book I found it a little jumpy. I liked the dogs’ traits and the end of the story.

 

 

Reviewer: Taylor Brooker

I’m very excited to be reviewing Five Colour Dog, as the dog is my Chinese animal zodiac, and I love dogs! This is such an interesting story, and the plot-twist towards the end was very unexpected! The story is universal and great for children, as it teaches kindness and the willingness to help others selflessly. It is also perfect for adults as it’s a simple story, which would really allow them to explore and learn Mandarin easily as it is a bilingual book, just like our others.

 

The illustrations are wonderful, and it’s easy to see how much work and effort has gone into creating each character and bringing them to life. It can be difficult to firstly design the character, but then to also design how they look from each angle, with each facial expression and different body language. Artist Jian Zhi Qiu has done a fantastic job of that, and each character is really believable and consistent, allowing the story to flow. It was also amazing to see the dog move in so many ways throughout the book. Dogs often sit or move in many different ways, and you don’t really think about it until you see those positions drawn by hand, so only then can you fully appreciate how differently dogs move, and therefore how challenging it is to draw them!