Gully's Travels (by Tor Seidler)

Gulliver is a purebred Lhasa Apso with a plush life. Belonging to a single professor, he lives in a luxurious apartment on New York's Park Avenue, has the best food, listens to opera, and summers in Paris. All that changes when his master marries an allergic woman, and gives Gulliver to his doorman, who lives with a rambunctious family in a crowded apartment in Queens. So Gulliver begins a series of journeys, attempting to regain some part of his previous life.

This genially subversive animal story calls into question the central virtue we associate with dogs: loyalty. In most children's books of this type, Gulliver's journey would be to make his way back home, and back into the affections of his master, but ordinary messages and sentiment have never been author Tor Seidler's way. Gulliver is loyal to his professor, but this is not reciprocated, and when the professor sets him aside for his lady love all too easily, even young readers will perceive that loyalty must be earned and deserved, and can be misplaced.

The next easy route for an author would be to have Gully's new family be wonderful in their boisterous, lower-class way, thus playing up the usual message that the poor are somehow more virtuous than the rich. But in this story, they don't treat him very well either. Seidler avoids the pitfalls and keeps taking his story in surprising directions until the messages (if there are any) and the plot are as messy and unpredictable as, well, life.

Author: Tor Seidler
Illustrator: Brock Cole
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Publication date: September 1, 2008
Number of pages: 173
Hardcover price: $16.95
Read Aloud: 8
Read Alone: 9