A Dog and Boy Love Story
By Henry Cole
(Scholastic Press, 2022)
Breathe out. Slowly. Every time I open this book, I feel love. Forever Home is a tender, heart-tugging wordless book masterfully told by Henry Cole’s detailed ink pen drawings.
The story begins before the title page, a practice I love in books. Let’s dig right in. Immediately we see distress in a dog as it sits atop a stoop, a lockbox hanging from the door handle and a key piece of environmental print—a FOR SALE sign—helping the reader deduce what is truly tragic: the family pet has been left behind.
Immediately, I’m emotionally invested in the story. I’m incensed. I know that many dogs are abandoned when people move—the next home not allowing pets or maybe there is even less of an excuse for the inexcusable. This dog is left to dig through trash for food, to wander precariously through traffic, to find shelter in a box.
Meanwhile, another story begins. As a dog walker attends to her pack of dogs on a sidewalk, a young boy crouches to make eye contact with one of them. Both boy and dog are intrigued. In the background, two men window shop outside a bookstore. As it turns out, these men are the boy’s parents and, back at home, the boy holds up pictures of dogs while carting a leash. It seems he’s campaigning for a pet. The dads, however, aren’t sold on the idea. The boy’s bedroom is a chaotic scene. If he can’t take care of all his things, how will he ever be responsible for a dog?
Side note here. This is Henry Cole’s story to tell, based on a real story a friend shared with him. Still, “tidiness” and “good with dogs” do not directly align. I say this as a dog lover who does not love house cleaning duties. Let me avoid the chores by, oh, walking the dog. I don’t see how my ability to consistently hit the clothes hamper with my worn garments proves I would make a great pet caretaker. Still, this is the dads’ stance.
The boy goes seemingly everywhere with his leash. He walks it in all kinds of weather and picks up invisible poop. This is the equivalent to carrying around a sack of flour to show one is capable of caring for a baby or perhaps minding one of those Tamagotchi virtual pets. I’ll admit to being a little slow in picking up on the story thread because I had not immediately connected the boy’s messy room with justification for not getting a pet. I thought the boy lugging a leash around meant he’d settled on an imaginary friend.
By chance, Messy Boy and Abandoned Dog meet. The boy ups his campaign, showing how responsible he can be. The obvious happy ending ensues.
Yes, the happy ending was a foregone conclusion—it’s a picture book, after all—but Cole adds an extra wrinkle to the story and I felt joy and relief when that point arrived. Cole gives us several pages of that happiness. Warm fuzzies most welcome.
It takes a special talent and confidence to create a wordless book. Cole “cheats” a little, adding a few signs to help “read” his exquisite drawings. It’s a bonus that the parents are a biracial gay couple. Happenstance. No biggie. Hopefully book banners can chill and let a good story be just that.
