I have been reading at least one picture book per month, this year. I love picture books. I sometimes feel like that’s cheating, to read a children’s book, but there is no cheating. I am making this up. I read Doug Salati’s Hot Dog because it won the Caldecott and Ezra Jack Keats awards a couple years ago. I was glad I did. What a warm, pleasant, adorable escape from reality for a few minutes. Besides loving the illustrations, characters, and story, my only “complaint” is that it doesn’t actually need the free verse poem of a text. I think wordless here is better.

It’s a hot, noisy day in the city and while on errands with his person, this little dog has had enough. What he needs is someone to notice that a breezy day on a deserted beach is so much better than all of this nonsense.

I am tempted to call this a graphic novel for kids except that it’s not long enough. There are multiple panels on some pages, and you follow along just as you would in a graphic novel. And as I said earlier, I don’t think the words—except for the onomatopoeia—are necessary at all. Perhaps that would have been a tough sell for Salati to publishers, but that means that kids who don’t yet read can thoroughly enjoy Hot Dog without even needing someone to read it to them. The illustrations make the story abundantly clear without words, which is great.

Speaking of, the illustrations are vibrant and cartoony and stylized, but somehow extremely immersive. You feel all the things while turning the pages, including emotions but also all the sounds, sights, smells, touch. And personally, I appreciated that the main human character in the story is an average-looking woman advanced in age.

I loved this book. I loved the art. I loved the gentle story somehow bursting with personality, meaning, and joy. I would enjoy it with a kid without reading the words. It’s the illustrations and the story told in pictures that won it its awards, and that’s what shines here. As well as our sassy little hot dog.