No Dogs Allowed (Ready, Set, Dogs!)
Gr 2–5—Dog-loving best friends Katie and Lucie live next door to one another in an apartment building with an unfortunate rule: NO DOGS ALLOWED. On a trip to the neighborhood thrift shop, the girls try on matching pink dog bone-shaped necklaces and discover that the jewelry holds the power to turn its wearers into dogs. Fortunately, they quickly figure out how to turn back into girls, and they have fun shape-shifting at will for the remainder of the story. Lucie and Katie join forces with two boys to write the winning submission for a local radio contest promoting Adopt-a-Dog Week. Back matter includes dog jokes, true stories about heroic dogs, and the authors' real-life dog ownership tales. Occasional black-and-white drawings highlight key characters and scenes, such as a humorous scene of the girls, in dog form, digging holes in a garden as their mothers look on with shocked expressions. This fun, quick read will have young dog lovers sitting up and begging for the next book in the series.—Amanda Struckmeyer, Middleton Public Library, Madison, WI