After dinner, Harry fell asleep in his favourite place, happily dreaming of how much fun it had been getting dirty. After a good, soapy scrubbing he is revealed: 'It's Harry! It's Harry!' cry the children happily, and all is right again in Harry's world:

The family find him sitting in the bath, holding in his mouth the scrubbing brush he buried earlier.

When he's found what he's looking for he bounds into the house and upstairs. Suddenly an idea occurs to him and he rushes to the garden and begins to dig feverishly. Harry's beginning to worry that fun as his adventure was, maybe he should have thought a little harder first, and he slinks away sadly to ponder his next move. He tries to show the family it's him, Harry, and he does all his special tricks - he 'flop flips', 'flip flops', plays dead, rolls over, dances and barks, but still no one realises that it's him. He rushes home, for food, bed and reassurance, only to find that no one recognises him. He's also a hungry dog, and a tired one, and he's beginning to worry that his family will think he's really run away, forever. He's now a black dog with not very many white spots at all. Finally he finds a coal lorry and slides down its chute getting himself the dirtiest of all. Bath forgotten, he plays with the men mending the road and gets rather dirty from the tarmac, he plays by the railway and gets even dirtier from the fumes, and he has a great game of tag with the other dogs getting dirtier still with all the mud in the fields. Harry has great fun while he's running away because most things are an adventure to him.

So, when he hears the taps running, he steals the scrubbing brush, buries it in the back garden in his special hiding place, and, just to make absolutely, very, most certainly sure he's avoided all ablutions, runs away from home. He likes most things but he doesn't like the bath any more than Sixer does. Harry is a lovely little white dog with black spots, but Harry is also a Dirty Dog.

This is a picture book to buy, not borrow. Harry's a wonderful character in a sweet and funny little story. If they work, as Harry The Dirty Dog works, they will be with you for a very long time. Summary: The best picture books grow with familiarity and repetition.

Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion