DAISY GETS LOST

The floppy-eared charmer who won the hearts of (among others) a Caldecott Award committee in her first outing suffers more doggy distress in this return.

Having chased first her blue ball and then an amusingly unconcerned-looking squirrel, Daisy finds herself alone in the trackless woods. Applying paint with broad brushwork both wet and dry, Raschka expertly captures sweeping emotional arcs as Daisy and her equally anxious owner search for each other through dense foliage. Finally, Daisy’s despairing howl leads to a reunion so joyful that it requires three nearly identical scenes to express properly. With only Daisy’s called-out name and that howl for text, the pictures chart the eventful outing in a mix of full spreads and sequential strips or panels—with a midcourse aerial view that reassuringly reveals that the two are never very far apart. The duckling Daisy in Jane Simmons’ Come Along, Daisy! (1998) may be more venturesome, but young children will readily identify with the mix of high spirits and vulnerability this Daisy, literally and figuratively fetching, displays.

Endearing.