Author: Laura James
Illustrator: Églantine Ceulemans
© Date: 2016
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Pages: 124
Chapters: Yes
Illustrations: Yes, every page layout has an illustration
Publisher Recommended Age: 6-9 years
Bonus Activities at End of Book: No
Summary from Book: Meet Pug. He lives with his best friend, Lady Miranda. Today Pug and Lady Miranda are going on a seafaring adventure! The bad news is, Pug is afraid of water. To escape getting splashed, Pug takes a well-timed snack break.
But when Pug follows his nose into an empty picnic basket, it gets picked up by an unsuspecting stranger, taking Pug farther and farther away from Lady Miranda. Soon he’s lost. If Pug has any hope of finding his way home, he will have to cross wobbly bridges, brave sinking ships, and face his greatest fear. Will Pug be able to find the captain within and steer himself back to Lady Miranda?
Note: This review is done from memory. I originally read this awhile ago.
Page Pig Thoughts: The seafaring adventure of Pug is cute and silly, but parts of it were not explained overly well. I was never sure if Lady Miranda lived on her own, but she did seem to be a child used to having her own way. It was a simple book with some British terms like having tea.
Page Pup gives this one a single thumb up, but didn’t go searching for any more possible books in the series.
Family Unit: Pug lives with Lady Miranda (a girl) who has a maid and footman.
Items of Interest:
- Pug loves snacking and eating, particularly jam tarts.
- Wendy, the maid, does whatever Lady Miranda needs inside the house. Will and Liam are footmen that do whatever Lady Miranda needs outside the house.
- Lady Miranda has a birthday party to attend on the boating lake where she is to play on the pedal boats and eat ice cream. Lady Miranda says that she will not pedal anything, so she brings Footman Will and Footman Liam to do the pedaling.
- Lady Miranda likes her footmen to look smart, so they wear old fashioned coats, stockings, and buckled shoes. They like dressing up.
- Lady Miranda dresses Pug up like a captain.
- Pug and Lady Miranda arrive at the lake in a sedan chair that Footman Will and Footman Liam carry.
- Lady Miranda complains to Pug that he is putting on weight again. Footman Will and Footman Liam arrive at the lake rather tired and sore because they believe both passengers have put on weight, but they do not say that out loud, they just look goofy in the illustration. Likely the implication is that Lady Miranda is a growing girl, so she naturally puts on weight as she grows, she is not drawn as an overweight girl.
- Lady Miranda likes the biggest pedal boat on the lake and tells Footman Will and Footman Liam to go rescue the children on it because surely that is why they are waving at them.
- Pug is afraid of water. He wanders over to a picnic basket looking for the jam tarts, where he falls inside. The lady with the picnic basket carries it back onto the bus where she is surprised to find a pug in her basket. Lady Miranda is upset to see Pug in the departing bus.
- Pug makes friends with the picnic basket lady as they share cake on the bus.
- Lady Miranda has Footman Will and Footman Liam carry her around in the sedan chair looking for Pug.
- Pug winds up being a skipper on a boat in a rowing race. When he is distracted by a nearby ice cream truck, his boat comes in second place. His team hoists him in victory because he was a better skipper than grumpy Brian that he had replaced.
- Pug follows picnic basket lady onto a boat while Lady Miranda makes a phone call to find out where the bus was going next.
- A seagull steals Pug’s captain’s hat and drops it near Lady Miranda giving her a clue where Pug went.
- Pug wanders around a harbor where he gets on a dinghy with a girl going out to meet her captain father on an ocean liner. Pug falls into the water, but the girl fishes him out.
- Footman Liam gets a foot blister, so Lady Miranda has to help carry him in the sedan chair.
- Pug gets onto the ocean liner. Lady Miranda descends on a rope suspended from a helicopter to rescue him.
- They all go home. Lady Miranda and Pug rest and warm up while Footman Will bandages Footman Liam’s foot. Wendy, the maid, is cooking in the background.
Other Books in Series (At Time of Posting):
- Book 2 – Cowboy Pug
- Book 3 – Safari Pug
- Book 4 – Pirate Pug