We had a new BLG reader this week. Welcome Azzah and thanks for bringing such an enjoyable book to share with us! Charlie the Ranch Dog is written by Ree Drummond and illustrated by Diane deGroat.

We were quite intrigued by Charlie, the ranch dog. He’s a pretty handsome guy who lives on a beautiful ranch and he seems very determined to tour the readers around the ranch, all the while explaining all of the hard work he does. We meet his best friend Suzie, another dog who lives on the ranch. We see Daisy, the cow with the bad habit of wandering into the yard when she isn’t supposed to. Daisy was particularly interesting to us. Looking at the picture, one student exclaimed, “Hey that cow doesn’t have an udder!”

“It’s a male,” someone else suggested.

“Males have udders. Hold on, do they?”

As Azzah wasn’t prepared to give a cow anatomy lesson, we moved on. Now everybody was paying particularly close attention. We began to notice something about Charlie.

“That dog doesn’t really do anything.”

“Nope. He’s just not very good at this.”

“Huh?! He’s asleep again!”

When we had seen Charlie nap in the flower garden, nap after lunch and nap beside the broken fence, we began to realize that Charlie was an expert napper but not much of a help around the ranch. However, late in the story Charlie does chase Daisy the cow out of the garden, giving a big howl that many of us joined in for, “RRRRRooowwww- ooohhh!”

“That dog does nothing but sleep!”

“Well,  he did howl.”

“It even sounded like a real dog.”

“Yeah, like a dog dieing!”

Still, Charlie is a charmer and we were all big fans by the book’s end. A sweet little story told from Charlie, the ranch dog’s perspective.

Our student reviewers report:

Truman: I liked it because Charlie said he did the work but Suzie did all of the work!

Khai: I liked the book because it was funny. The funniest part was when he said I finished my work when Charlie actually did nothing but sleeping.