Please Take Me for a Walk by Susan Gal Ages 3-7 40 pages Knopf May 2010 Hardcover     You cannot help but love the dog that stars in Susan Gal’s second picture book, Please Take Me for a Walk. With bright illustrations and words, she captures the excitement of a dog greeting her owner and anticipating all the activities she loves: chasing the cat, keeping the squirrels up high, greeting the neighbors, walking through the city, meeting other dogs, etc. Every few pages, the dog stops and talks directly to the reader saying “Please take me for a walk” with the cutest expression on her face. She’s hard to resist. This simple story is one that children can anticipate, make predictions about before reading using their background knowledge about what dogs like to do, or imagine themselves in the place of a dog. The lively collage illustrations include a great deal of detail and background activity and beg to be touched as each page reveals many different textures. The people in the story are diverse in race and culture representing an active urban community. Children just learning to read will enjoy using picture cues and the repetitive title phrase to read a whole book on their own. With an attractive cover, beautifully detailed endpapers and a simple story, this is one book that almost any preschool child will pick up and enjoy right away.     web reviews   Kristine Wildner/2010 for curled up with a good kid's book   For grown-up fiction, nonfiction and speculative fiction book reviews, visit our sister site Curled Up With a Good Book (www.curledup.com)