During a visit to a pediatric hospital to read and play with the little patients, Julia Donaldson saw some photographs on a board: a dog next to various hospitalized children. Although some were in bed or in wheelchairs, joy radiated from all the images. In some, the children hugged the dog; in others, they played with it, read to it, or painted it. You could almost hear their laughter and voices, and you expected to see the dog come out of the pictures and start running around. A writer like Julia Donaldson couldn't let such a story go untold, so she began researching. The dog was a female puppy, and her owner, who lived nearby, was involved in a program that used dogs in pediatric clinics to improve the mood of hospitalized children. The results were visible: for some children, the days spent in the hospital were not only more enjoyable, but there were also fewer of them – the treatment came quicker. This book is the story of this puppy, and Julia Donaldson tells it in verse, with the humor and musical rhythm we have come to expect, while Florin Bican's translation is, as always, very inspired. Pic is a Dalmatian and visits the children in the hospital every day. She is cheerful and eager to play, but also brave – she doesn’t hesitate at all when she needs to intervene to save a child in danger. Injured during this heroic act and confined to her bed, Pic returns the love and joy she shared with the children she visited in the hospital. For the illustrations, the author turned to Sara Ogilvie, a young artist known in Britain. She accompanies Pic's story with cheerful yet realistic images – and this is another great merit of the book. We see a lot of joy and empathy: troubled children, anxious parents, tired doctors, crowded hallways. Should reality be hidden from children? We just need the right way to describe it to them. If Pic's story can offer at least a little comfort to children who are forced to endure tough times in a hospital, then it has achieved its purpose.

• Age Group: 3-7 years
• Size: 28 x 25 cm
• Number of Pages: 32 pages
• ISBN: 9786068996400
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Translation by: Florin Bican