A Review of “What Makes a Dog?”

Author Dr Tal Croitoru. Illustrated by Tut Blumenthal. 

My niece identified as a dog when she was six years old. Every day after school, she would get on all fours in the living room of the family apartment and emit a sharp, barking yap.

Her brother, who was in pre-kindergarten and susceptible to contagion, identified as a dog to join in her game.

Both children would become humans to eat, for their parents had a rule against animals at the dinner table, but then they would often become animals once more after eating, sometimes until bed. Their play would only stop for quarrels over what a dog should do or say in that moment, if a dog or a cat was having their particular adventure. If they could not agree on what that was, they could bark at each other for half an hour.

It all stopped as soon as they moved out of an apartment into a house with room to adopt family pets. Instead of making up animal adventure games on the stairs, they became responsible for the care and feeding of real animals.

A pair of very different dogs was first to arrive. One was shorter than the other. One was bolder than the other. One was louder than the other. Both children soon realized that the dogs were not alike in any way except that they were dogs. They realized that the neighbor’s dog was also different, that in fact no two dogs had the same personality or appearance.

“What Makes a Dog, a Dog?” is a new pair of books for children about the same ages that my niece and nephew were when they barked on the stairs. The book comes in two versions, one for boys and the other for girls. The message is that just like all dogs are dogs, even though all dogs are different, all boys are boys, even though all boys are different, and all girls are girls, even though all girls are different.

“There are so many ways to be a dog and they are all great! A dog does not need to look or behave a certain way in order to be a dog.” Instead, “If it was born a dog, then it is a dog. And that is great!” 

Author Dr. Tal Croitoru, a clinical social worker, wants “to immunize children against the toxic messages of gender ideology”. Children, like dogs, do not need to change anything about themselves to be who they are. “Toxic messages are unfortunately becoming more and more widespread in our society – as if a certain toy, a certain activity, or certain clothing indicates a “wrong body” or some pathology that requires ‘correction,’” Croitoru writes.

Croitoru took inspiration from watching a talk by Dr. Stephen Levine, an American psychiatrist with decades of experience treating children distressed about their gender. Drawing on long-established clinical research, Levine argues that the vast majority of children will outgrow dysphoria as they mature, their perspectives change, and the meaning of the words “boy” and “girl” expand for them.

After thinking about that talk for some time, Croitoru decided to create these books “to inoculate your child” against gender Ideology.

Artist Tut Blumenthal has used AI to create dozens of images for these books. The dreamlike hyper-realism of AI art is not a distraction, indeed it works very well with the premise of these books. Blumenthal has put some care into tuning the algorithms. 

A variety of dogs run and jump and bark through the pages. The dogs are adorable and lifelike. Classic toy cars and homey interiors give the images a timeless touch. The children look consistent, even though they are different from page to page, displaying a variety of toy preferences, hair lengths, and costume play choices with the same face. A child is meant to see alternate versions of themselves in the same girl or boy as they turn these pages.

These books resonated with me because my niece and nephew thought there was only one way to be a dog until they started meeting real dogs, and then their perspectives changed. It did not occur to them on their own that there is no right way to be a dog, or to be a boy, or to be a girl. They had to get to know some real dogs, and then get to know themselves, first. Children need this healthy, simple, and essential life lesson more than ever. Both books are available via Amazon or the publisher’s website.

Photo by Chris Arthur-Collins on Unsplash