One of my favorite books when I was a kid! ( )

Aww, what a wonderful story of two independent souls who become housemates (with separate beds, of course). Read (for the first time ever) in [b:Story Land: 40 Of The Best Little Golden Books Ever Published|1786505|Story Land 40 Of The Best Little Golden Books Ever Published|Golden Press|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1188336040s/1786505.jpg|1785397]. ( )

When the first edition of this book was released in 1952, Margaret Wise Brown had recently died. She was 42 and at the top of her field as one of the most prolific children's book authors of her time. She had so many books in the works that she was forced to come up with pseudonyms so as not to flood the market with her titles. Mister Dog, the dog who belonged to himself, is a fanciful story illustrating independence and self reliance. Margaret never dumbed down an idea she had for a book because her readers happen to be children. She used words that children may not know, but then, if they had the book read to them, maybe if they were lucky the reader would explain the "big" words ( what a concept). Crispian is a character that is well rounded. He is kind, generous, playful and a conservative! If you read children's books to children, you will not find an author that respected a child's instinctual intelligence more than Margaret Wise Brown. ( )

This book is a fantasy. Since none of this could really happen in real life. There is no way that a dog could cook and live in a two story house and talk and all sorts of things. The story does not really have a very well thought out plot it seems, and at time the story gets a little confusing. The author does not explain who Crispin is and how it came to be that the dog is all alone, but it talks about why he is named Crispin's Crispian, but then gives no answer. As an adult you can infer what the story means, but for a child this would be very difficult. ( )

Well, here is another Little Golden Book that I found sitting next to my brother's computer, and since it would pretty much take me less that 5 minutes to read this book, I picked it up and read it. My initial impression was WTF? Seriously WTF? Is this book really a kids' book, and if it were to have been written today would anybody actually touch it? I think not (though it seems by glancing across the number of reviews of this book, I am in the extreme minority).
The book is about a dog who belongs to no one. He lives in a two story dog house and smokes a pipe. He then goes out for a stroll and meets a boy who belongs to no one (ie he is a street kid) so takes him home and the boy sleeps in Mister Dog's bed. Seriously, what may have been innocent back in 1952 is certainly not innocent now. Granted, kids sleep in their parent's bed all the time (much to their parent's dismay) and they even sleep with animals on their bed, but this I felt was going just a little bit too far.
While I said that it may have been innocent at the time of its writing, I assure you that it is not now. I really would not like my kids (if I had any, which I don't) getting the idea that running off with strangers and climbing into bed with them is okay: it is not. Granted, the kid in the book belongs to no one, but this, to me, is also absurd. It is a sad fact of life that there are a lot of children out there who simply do not have parents (or are from abusive households, or simply ran away from home). While such things were swept under the table and ignored in 1952, they are not now.
I did have the book at a higher rating, but the more that I think about it, the more convinced I am that it should not be a part of a child's reading collection. Granted, there are a lot of worse books out there (don't go reading the Satyricon to a child, please), but as a children's book, no thanks. ( )