By Chris Raschka
A wordless picture book about a dog whose favorite red ball gets destroyed — the loss, the moping, and finally a new ball, all told in pictures.
Daisy is a round little dog who loves her red ball. She naps curled around it, carries it everywhere, and plays until she flops down worn out. Then at the park a bigger dog grabs the ball and it pops, and just like that it's gone. Daisy droops around the house, moping and staring at the spot where the ball used to be. On the next trip to the park, the other dog's owner turns up with a new blue ball, the two dogs go bounding off together, and Daisy is herself again. Raschka paints every beat of it in loose, wet strokes.
Because there's not a single word, a very young child who can't yet read still takes in the whole arc — the delight, the loss, and the recovery all sit right there in Daisy's posture and the shape of each scene, legible straight off the page. The grief and the comfort come across without any language at all, which is why a child who has ever broken or lost a favorite thing tends to recognize the feeling at once.