Archie by Domenica More Gordon is a wordless book to howl over

Archie is a wordless book that tells the story of an owner, Archie, who starts making clothing for his dog.  Archie is also a dog, but he’s a human figure with a dog head.  So, Archie’s dog starts wearing this clothing and it’s a big hit!  Soon enough the owners who had been ordering clothing for their dogs want Archie to make them clothing too.  

Being a wordless book this isn’t the kind of thing that you would read over and over to your children.  It’s the kind of book that, depending on the age, you may walk them through once or twice and then let them tell the story.  They may tell the story aloud or to themselves, but these books let readers create their own path.

Of course it all rides on the illustrations and in Archie’s case they’re very effective and quite beautiful.  It looks like they were done in pencil with a little watercolor or markers to fill in the bigger spaces.  The images have a ‘real’ look to them, even though the characters are all dogs.

I love wordless books because they let the reader fill in the gaps with their own story.  Another nice lesson that children can learn from Archie is creativity and entrepreneurship.  Archie simply starts making coats for his dog, which leads to meeting a nice lady friend, making clothing for her dog, then clothing for her, then more people and finally being able to take a great vacation.

Archie is such a pleasant, comforting book that you’ll want to look over it as much as your children.  Our oldest child is 3 and as a family we’ll look over the pages and tell the story.  I’ll ask simple questions like “what’s the dog’s name” or “what’s he going to wear?”  Our youngest who just turned 1 laughs at the book also, especially the pages that show all of the dogs wearing clothing.  This isn’t the kind of book that produces big belly laughs, but it will have children (and you) grinning the entire time that you’re looking through it.

Domenica is a Scottish artist whose work has been featured in galleries around the world and in various magazines.

We were provided with a complimentary copy of Archie for review purposes.  All thoughts are my own.