Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda

Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda Written by Margaret Atwood. Illustrated by Dušan Petričić. Toronto, ON: Key Porter Kids, 2004. 32 pp., cloth, $21.95. ISBN 1-55263-609-7. Grades 1-5 / Ages 6-10.

Alliteration playfully punctuates Margaret Atwood's peppy picture book, Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda.

Bashful Bob is "abandoned in a basket" and thinks he is a dog. Doleful Dorinda's parents "disappear in a dreadful disaster" leaving her "dumped on distant relatives."

Three dutiful dogs also play their part in this tantalizing tale. They do some darned adorable deeds to help Bob grow from baby to boy. With added help from Dorinda, Bob aces his alphabet. 

Then, there's the buffalo. The buffalo had been placed in a nearby botanical garden by a "befuddled and bungling bureaucrat."

The "bewildered buffalo bounds over a barrier" and gives Bob and Dorinda the chance to become good deed doers.

Not wanting to pop the punch-line bubble, all I can say is that Bob and Dorinda end up dappily ever dafter, as the boxer might say, because he talks through his nose.

Illustrations by Dušan Petričić are delightfully delivered, throwing the door open to adorable daydreams for deaders of all dages.