Treat

By Mary Sullivan

From the author of Up On Bob, a whimsical tale of a Boston Terrier with a short attention span and his never-ending pursuit of what he wants most.

As the old saying goes, “Give a dog a ball, and he'll beg to play for days. But give a dog a treat, and he’ll never stop begging.” 

In this companion to Mary Sullivan's Geisel Award-winning Ball, there's a new dog in town and he is focused on finding a treat, no matter the cost. But endless tricks and futile searching (you can't eat Grandma’s dentures!) can be pretty exhausting. Just when he’s about to give up hope…what’s this? TREAT! 

In this hilarious and heartwarming graphic novel/picture book hybrid, readers will rejoice and laugh as they recognize the silly, but always determined, behavior of man’s best friend.

“Sullivan spins a hilarious minidrama around a hyperactive canine and a single word of text...Cartoonlike illustrations, precisely drawn in digitally colored pencil, perfectly capture the portly, perky-eared, wide-eyed canine's treat mania.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Sullivan has created quite a treat herself: a canine hero with a one-track mind and an endlessly expressive one-word vocabulary (aided by comically frenetic typography) whose approach to thwarted desire is, as any child will recognize, all too human.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780544866492

Mary Sullivan

Mary Sullivan spent a great deal of time drawing in her formative years. Though she received a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin, she considers herself a self-trained illustrator. Ms. Sullivan has shown her work at galleries and coffees shops in Dallas and Austin. She channels her considerable creative energy  into projects for Highlights for Children, Scholastic, Innovative Kids, School Zone, Oxford Press U.K., Pearson and many more. Her first picture book for HMH, Ball, was a 2014 Geisel Honor Book. She lives in Cedar Park, Texas. www.marysullivan.com Twitter: @sullivandraws Instagram: @sullivandraws

Book preview

Reviews for Treat

[Joanna Sztandera · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Three stars because the only word they say is treat and it was quite boring

[sweetiegherkin · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A dog wakes up smelling a treat but is foiled when it's not for him. Will he ever get something tasty to eat?This picture book is incredibly clever in using just one word ("treat") numerous times, with assorted punctuation and illustrated scenarios to indicate different uses of the word.However, clever and enjoyable don't always end up being the same thing. I found this book not particularly interesting to read aloud, and the child I was reading it to (age 5, avid reader) wasn't particularly invested in it either.

[kaethe_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love that dog. That is a good dog. Mary Sullivan really gets at the essence of dog/child relationships. Don't miss Ball by the same author.

Library copy