Little Joe and the Big City - Mike Darcy - ★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Mike Darcy

ILLUSTRATOR: Tincho Schmidt

GENRE: Children's Picture Book.

PUBLICATION DATE: May 26, 2025

RATING: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A chapter book about a little dog and his adventure in the city. A bit too text-intensive and a bit clunky in flow, but the cute storyline and characters will charm those who enjoy animal characters. The illustrations are sweetly quirky. Recommended to little animal lovers.

Plot Preview:

Little Joe is a puppy who lives with his girl Anna and her family in a farm near a forest. When the family decides to visit Anna’s auntie and uncle in the big city, Joe is excited at the adventure.

The city doesn’t turn out to be exactly as fun as Joe had hoped. While he goes around the neighbourhood looking for fun things to discover, he ends up lost in the unknown neighbourhood. With so many dangers around him, will Joe be able to find his way back to Anna? And what about the new companion he has bumped into unexpectedly?

This book is the second title in the ‘Little Joe’ series, but it works well as a standalone.

Most kids enjoy stories with dogs, so in that sense, this book has already done the right thing by having such a sweet character in the lead. Little Joe is a good fellow in every way, even though his adventurous personality leads him to trouble. His emotions come out really well.

The cover already reveals the second key character, so it’s not really a spoiler to say that there is also an adorable cat in this story. I didn’t expect her character to pop up the way it did; I expected a more typical dog vs. cat kind of plot. This unusual plotline was refreshing and touching.

Through their interaction, the story also covers an important topic connected to pets (Not going into spoilers), and will hopefully offer little readers something to ponder over regarding pet care.

The illustrations are somewhat whimsical but they work well for this storyline. One side of the open book has only plain text against a white background while the other side has full-colour illustrations. At times, the page with illustrations also has text written against it. Though the shadow effect makes the text mostly visible, it might be a bit distracting for little readers.

The main reason I didn’t rate is higher is the quantity of the text. On many of the text-only pages, more than half the page is covered with text. Though there are neat para divisions, the page still appears too text-heavy. The book is aimed at 5-8 year olds. The older kids in that age range might be comfortable with so much text, but the younger ones might find it too lengthy. The writing has a mix of simple and difficult words, so this might further slow down the reading (whether kids are reading by themselves or someone is reading to them.)

Overall, this is quite a nice book with a cute story, cute lead characters, and cute graphics. A pretty good options for little ones. If it is to be read at bedtime, better begin bedtime early!

My thanks to author Mike Darcy for providing a complimentary copy of “Little Joe and the Big City” via the Library Thing Early Reviewers Program. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

The digital version of this book is currently available on Kindle Unlimited.