Title: The Grove Dogs
Author: Alfonso Grambone
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 978-1-5245-9945-4
Pages: 28
Genre: Illustrated Children’s Book, Juvenile Fiction
Reviewed by: Beth Adams
Pacific Book Review Star
Awarded to Books of Excellent Merit
With a vivid, colorful and bold illustrative style, coupled with some graphic onomatopoeia, the story of Alfie, his dog Harley and the adventures of when they first met are put into a multi-media of words and pictures in perfect harmony. Written as an adventure story with a group of friends seeking to retrieve old baseballs which got lost in the grove; when they are attacked by a monster, then bullied by a gang of kids, all leading to the conclusion of adopting a puppy, author Alfonso Grambone has created a masterpiece in the illustrated children’s book genre with The Grove Dogs.
The first thing to notice here is the artwork. Captivating from the opening page, the artistic style has a bold, intensely colorful and comic book way of bringing forth the storyline parallel to the words, so as to reinforce graphically the story for children to imagine as their parent, for example, reads the text of the story. The crossover of literary elements of the story done both via art and words create a synergistic flow and motion, a pace I would call it, for the movement of the story. This formation of a higher- level storytelling technique looks easy when it is done well resulting in an excellent piece of writing ideally suited for the toddler market niche. The Grove Dogs becomes the name for the group of kids, Alfie and his friends, as Grambone sets up the ending of this story to becoming the start of a possible sequel adventure of Harley and his human pals.
I would place Grambone’s book in the category of the best, including the Dr. Seuss books with that unforgettable Cat, and even some of the Peanuts books that Schultz left us to enjoy with our future generations. As nowadays, the computer and Internet generation content providers are competing for mindshare having animation beyond imagination at their disposal, yet keeping to the perfect-bound children’s book as a form of media is quite challenging. Alfonso Grambone has achieved the balance needed to show kids that all good stories don’t need to come from something that runs on batteries, and instead using The Grove Dogs as a stimulus to their minds is in fact the best example of keeping up with the trends in art (comic representations of kids), themes (such as bullying), adventure (the grove) and of course, man’s best friends – dogs.
The Grove Dogs should grace the bookshelves of all adventure-loving boys and girls, especially dog lovers. “Bravo Alfonso,” and we can’t wait to see who moved in across the street in your next episode!
