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The fictional giant dog that we remember most these days is probably Clifford, the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell. Those are funny books and there are many in the series, some better than others. The first Clifford book was published in 1963. But long before Clifford existed, there was Otto the Giant Dog. The first book in the series, Otto at Sea, was published in 1936, followed by Otto in Texas in 1959 and Otto in Africa in 1961. There may be an even earlier book called Giant Otto but I can’t find any information on it and never saw it. There was a final book, Otto and the Magic Potatoes, but that was markedly different from the three reviewed here and not nearly as interesting, in my opinion. The author and illustrator of the Otto books, and many others, was the artist and author William Pène du Bois. His children’s books are ingenious and highly creative, with colorful, detailed, and whimsical pictures. He won the 1948 Newbery Award for his book The Twenty-one Balloons, and was a runner-up twice for the Caldecott Medal.
Otto is a huge yellow-tan dog, very intelligent and very friendly. By huge I mean much bigger than an elephant-huge. His master is named Duke and they live together in France. Otto at Sea tells of their adventures on an ocean liner and his medal and ticker-tape parade in New York City for his heroic rescue of a distressed ship. Otto in Africa is set, not in the steamy jungles with exotic animals, but in the sandy hills of northern Africa, fighting with French Foreign Legion soldiers in desert forts against native bandits. Otto in Texas moves to American, where Duke and Otto are guests on a large Texan ranch, where everything is big and Otto fits right in. He helps catch some rustlers – not cattle rustlers but oil rustlers. These three books are witty, with delightful and zany humor. William Pène du Bois’ mind worked a little differently than our minds! These books are great read-aloud stories for 4+ year olds. They have simple but elegant language, so that a child’s vocabulary and feel for sentence structure will be enriched by hearing these books read to them.