By Alexandra Day
A big, calm dog is left to mind the baby for an afternoon, and because the whole story is told in pictures, a child who can't read a word yet can follow every bit of the mischief on their own.
'Look after the baby, Carl. I'll be back shortly,' Mother says, and then she's gone. That's the last word in the book. Everything after is pictures. The baby climbs out of the crib, and Carl, an enormous and unbelievably patient Rottweiler, turns into the world's most devoted babysitter. The two of them slide down the laundry chute. They dance. They ride the elevator, splash in the fish tank, raid the fridge, and make a spectacular mess. Then, in the last few minutes before Mother's key turns in the lock, Carl cleans up every trace of it, gets the baby fed and washed and back in the crib, and flops down looking like the good dog he is. Your child sees the whole afternoon that Mother never will.
There's barely any text to sit still for, which is the whole point if your child won't. The story lives in the pictures, warm and soft-edged, and a two-year-old can track every beat: the sneaky escape, the mischief, the frantic cleanup, the innocent face when Mother walks back in. And it counts as reading. Watching a face, working out what comes next, holding the shape of a story in their head, that's the real thing even without words. It's also genuinely funny, which tends to be what brings a child back to a book a second and third time.