Ali Pye’s Rosie is My Best Friend (Simon & Schuster) is such a special story about a very special friendship between a little girl and her dog.

The book takes us through a day in the life of this duo, from waking up very early to play, to snuggling up together in bed at night. In between they have some great adventures and I love how the interplay of text and illustrations offers so much humour. At one point our protagonists “help” by cleaning the house (pretty badly to be honest, as evidenced by the muddy footprints on the kitchen floor!) and our narrator tells us:

‘We would have helped some more, but the grown-ups said we’d done enough for now. They were really quite firm about it’.

The friends walk for miles together. They zip and zoom around the park and travel even further in their imagination, from outer space to the ocean depths. Ali Pye’s picture book would work really well as a wind-down to bed as that’s where they end up, knowing that tomorrow will be an even more special day for both of them.

There’s a twist at the end which I wasn’t expecting and which really made me smile! But knowing the twist doesn’t spoil re-reads at all: the text and illustrations are just as wonderful the fifth time as they are the first. In fact, I think I might just dip into Rosie Is My Best Friend for a sixth re-read…

[Book supplied by the publisher for possible review on MyBookCorner, according to our policy. We review the books we love.]

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