Barracca, Debra and Sal. The Adventures of Taxi Dog. Illustrated by Mark Buehner. Dial Books for Young Readers, 1990.

My name is Maxi
   I ride in a taxi
      Around New York City all day.
I sit next to Jim
   (I belong to him)
      But it wasn't always this way.

Maxi is a homeless dog in the Big Apple until one day he meets Jim, a taxi driver. Jim takes Maxi home and feeds him and ties a red scarf around Maxi’s neck. Then Maxi gets to ride in Jim’s taxicab every day and “see all the sights . . . uptown and down.” Maxi and Jim pick up and transport all sorts of interesting fares: a businessman, an opera singer, a pregnant lady about to give birth, two clowns, and even a chimpanzee. And Maxi sometimes provides a bit of entertainment for the passengers as they ride through NYC to their destinations.

“The art for this book was prepared by using oil paints over acrylics. It was then camera-separated and reproduced in red, yellow, blue, and black.” I don’t know exactly what that process looks like, but the result is colorful, crowded montage of city life with black and yellow taxicab frames around many of the pages that contain only text. The illustrations fill the other pages with Maxi mostly at the center of each picture.

Children will love the rhyming text and the dog’s-eye view of New York City, which is why this Reading Rainbow book made the grade to be added to the Expanded Edition of Picture Book Preschool. The author blurb in the back of the book says that Debra and Sal Barracca were inspired to write The Adventures of Taxi Dog after riding in a taxi whose owner kept his dog with him in the front seat. I wonder if that taxi driver knows that he and his dog inspired a beautiful and vibrant picture book.

I just found out, by way of another private lending librarian, that there are at Least three more books by the Barraccas about Maxi the Taxi Dog:

• Maxi the Hero
• Maxi the Star
• A Taxi Dog Christmas

If you want to donate one of these other Maxi books to the library, I won’t turn it down. I’m quite fond of dogs–in books.

You can check out The Adventures of Taxi Dog along with other books listed in Picture Book Preschool under the themes of Farms and Cities as a part of the PBP Farms and Cities Picture Book Treasure Box from Meriadoc Homeschool Library.