If You Were a Dog - Hardcover

"Elegant, curious free verse and lush watercolors combine in a jaunty musing about the wonders of zoological pretending." --Booklist "Not so much a story as an imaginative survey of creatures great and small, this book presents a variety of animal just being themselves. Swenson's playful direct-address text is chock-full of sound effects and rollicking rhythms that beg to be read aloud." --The Horn Book "Raschka brings movement, energy, and personality to his vibrantly colored art . . . A fun way to get readers to use their imaginations in the natural world." --School Library Journal "Addressing both a winsome girl character and child readers, Swenson invites kids to speculate what sort of dog, cat, fish, bird, bug, frog and dinosaur they might want to be . . . Swenson's rhythmic cadences coupled with Raschka's wry, upbeat illustrations yield a title that's a cheery picker-upper." --Kirkus Reviews "Swenson's playful language and Raschka's amiable cartoons lend a welcome unpredictability to this animal game." --Publisher's Weekly

In this lively book illustrated by Caldecott Medal winner Chris Raschka, a child imagines life as many different animals. If you could be any kind of animal, what would you be? Would you be a dog that goes ARRRROOOOOOO? Or maybe you would be a sharp-toothed dinosaur that can CHOMP, STOMP, ROAR! Perhaps you might want to be a hopping frog that goes BOING, BOING, RIBBET! But maybe you would want to be the best kind of animal of all: a child!