Reading Project - review of Chapter 1 of 'A Dog So Small'

1. A Dog So Small – Chapter 1 Review
• Chapter 1 of ‘A Dog So Small’ is called ‘Early on a Birthday’.
• This is a 3rd Person Narrative (the book’s narrative voice says ‘he-she-they' but
never ‘I’) but it seems to be a 3rd Person Narrative that focuses on one particular
character, a boy called Ben.
• Ben is one of at least 5 children who lives with his parents in London. He shares a
room with two brothers and his two older sisters share a room.
• The book starts on his birthday. Ben gets up before everybody else and goes out
on his own. The book doesn’t tell us how old Ben is, but I would guestimate from
the opening that he is around Y7 in school, maybe slightly younger. It’s difficult
to judge this from a book that was written nearly 60 years ago – today I think if a
book started with a boy waking up and walking off on his own into the middle of
London you would expect him to be quite a bit older than 10-12 years old.
• There is a big idea of what the book is going to be about that is set up in Chapter
1. Ben is expecting to get a dog from his Grandparents for his birthday – he
remembers a conversation with his Grandpa when his Grandpa had said this –
but it’s obvious from the description of his house as he wakes up that there is no
room for a dog there.
• This is especially true because all of the dogs that Ben is daydreaming about
having are really big dogs – bloodhounds, wolfhounds, and Borzoi (which is a
Russian Wolfhound and is the one he settles on in his daydream).
• Ben’s daydreams about this are interesting because at one point his daydreaming
is interrupted by more daydreaming – he is imaging Russia in the winter, and
what it would look like with snow everywhere, when suddenly his daydream
switches to a wolf hunt in that snow. He is already deep into the idea that he is
getting a dog – a big dog. He’s waiting for the post to arrive – he breaks off from
his daydreams to rush home to see – and he doesn’t seem to have even
considered that there might not be a dog in the post.
• This could be funny – it could be setting us up to laugh at Ben for being silly –
but I don’t think it is. I think this is mainly because he is our viewpoint character,
and even though it is a third person narrative we are really inside his head for the
whole time – and to laugh at him would be like laughing at ourselves.
• Instead I think this is setting up a narrative about how Ben deals with the
disappointment of not getting a (BIG) dog for his birthday. This book’s title - ‘A
Dog So Small’ - helps suggest this.