Rating: 
Summary: A great wordless book
Review: (...) It's a beautifully illustrated book with all of two printed sentences. The child can speak the story, question the story, and describe the probability if they are mature enough. Yes, the parents do leave the child with a Rottweiller, but unless you are buying this as a parenting manual this will not affect your children's behaviour.I am amazed that anyone finds it shocking, considering the truly shocking we see in our culture all day.. a piece of children's ficiton on par with a giant red dog (Clifford?) or any fairy tale ever spoken. It is truly innocent and appealing to most toddlers I've met.
Rating:
Summary: A great wordless book
Review: (...) It's a beautifully illustrated book with all of two printed sentences. The child can speak the story, question the story, and describe the probability if they are mature enough. Yes, the parents do leave the child with a Rottweiller, but unless you are buying this as a parenting manual this will not affect your children's behaviour. I am amazed that anyone finds it shocking, considering the truly shocking we see in our culture all day.. a piece of children's ficiton on par with a giant red dog (Clifford?) or any fairy tale ever spoken. It is truly innocent and appealing to most toddlers I've met.
Rating:
Summary: Carl Is Adorable, Some Readers Need Perspective
Review: As a children's librarian, I, too, am absolutely outraged about this book! I am outraged that so many people have so little ability to separate reality from fantasy. Folks, if this book is causing problems in your home, may I suggest that you also avoid Amelia Bedelia (dumbest maid in the world), "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs", ALL the Miss Nelson books, The Stupids and, as your child grows up, toss ALL fantasy novels straight out the window. (Goodbye, Dorothy! Goodbye, Chet Gecko!)
Of course, for all I know, the people worrying about Carl being left alone to mind a baby actually DO inhabit a world where maids actually draw a picture of the bath when asked to draw a bath, it really DOES rain spaghetti, teachers can fool their students with simple disguises, people are as dumb as the Stupids, animals talk and tornados really do carry little girls away over the rainbow. In which case, instead of being outraged, I am either very jealous or very scared.
For everyone else, Carl is a riot to read, cute as can be and your child will have a giggle imagining that a baby and a dog could REALLY get up to that much trouble.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for any dog-loving child!
Review: Beautiful pictures captivate child and adult alike as they tell the adventures of lovable Carl and his small charge. On this day, Carl's job is simply to babysit for an afternoon. What an afternoon it turns out to be for Carl and the baby! Even non-readers can follow Carl's adventures and begin to cultivate a love for books through this creatively told story. Dogs and young children are a perfect combination. After reading this book, you will think the same about books and young children!
Rating:
Summary: We Love Carl.
Review: Five years ago, my sister-in-law tried to convince me that a book about a dog - a rottweiler, no less - who babysits when mother goes out was "wonderful". I was skeptical (at best). (Let me get this straight: the mother puts her baby in the crib and tells the DOG to take care of it? Then the mother LEAVES? That's crazy. That's not a good message. It's a Rottweiler? What was the author thinking?) Once I got to READ the book, though, I fell in love too. I must admit that we contributed a couple of Carl books to my niece's growing library that year. Now we are building a Carl collection for our son, and it's a hit. At 2 years old, he loved to have Daddy read this to him. At 3.5, he reads it to anyone who will sit still. His take on the action is a little different than ours, but it is very imaginative! This is the first of the Carl books. They're all my favorite. I just can't decide. I like to go in order, though. These are not particularly sequential books, but Baby is a little bigger in each book as they go along. I love the open-ended play we get from this book, so that anyone reading it, including your own Baby, can make up the story. The illustrations are fabulous - the action is what our kids have focused on, and the detail is amusing for the older reader on the 112th time through. I recommend this for any small child, especially the 1yo - 4yo crowd. Give it to some lucky family, or get it for yourself!
Rating: 
Summary: Not a fan
Review: I understand why some people like the cute premise of this book, and the nice illustrations. I thought I would too, as I'm a dog lover and like kids' books that have a sense of humor. But I have to say I don't like this one. Maybe I'd like the other Carl books better.
I checked this one out of the library and just read it to my son -- 23 months. I had to whisk past the page with the baby climbing out of the crib, because he is so observant and has been trying to climb out of his crib for awhile now. I think the only reason he hasn't is that he thinks it isn't possible. This book shows him that it is.
I felt a little ill viewing the picture of the baby in the fishtank. I find it hard to have a sense of humor about that. As soon as we finished this book I rushed to the computer and removed it from my Amazon.com wish list of things for my son's birthday.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a wonderful language builder for children.
Review: I was introduced to this book while attending college. (My field of study was hearing impaired children). This book is not necessarily a book to be "read" to the child, but one in which the child "reads" to the parents. It helps children of young age and any ability learn language by telling the story to the parents. Each time the child views the story the parent can point out details in the beautifully drawn pictures to help expand the child's language abilities with new words. Telling the story will also help a child's imagination to grow. This book is definitely one to be enjoyed by parents and children together. I personally own all the "Carl" books and can't wait to share them with my young son.
Rating:
Summary: Caution, read with child
Review: Infants, toddlers, dogs and books for children should, perhaps, come with instruction manuals. Of course, the people who most need directions might not read them. But parents can best use children's books by reading with their children, not by handing them over, unread, as baby-sitting substitutes. This develops in children an outsized ability to communicate -- and much-needed senses of inquiry, humor and fun, particularly if book discussions, however elementary, result. Which brings me to this fictional picture story for infants and toddlers, first published in 1985. The mother left Carl, a Rottweiler, to look after her baby while she went out. The obvious impossibility of this situation is precisely what renders the story so delightful to most kids. The baby played on her mother's vanity table, messing with the powder. She took a swim in the goldfish tank, got into the refrigerator and dumped food and milk on the kitchen floor (which Carl tracked about), slid down the laundry shoot and took a bath. Every child must learn to clean up, and Carl set a fine example. Carl's success prompted the author to create an entire Carl series. In each vignette, the mother asked Carl to look after her baby, and together the baby and dog always got into new mischief. Pure fun accounts for the wild success of this book and series. Evidently, most parents realize that laughing with children over books can teach them many things, including the early ability to distinguish fact from fiction--and that using words like "silly" and "trouble" can make this understandable even to babies under one year. Alyssa A. Lappen
Rating:
Summary: A great "wordless book"
Review: It's not toally wordless.. there are a total of two sentences; one in the beginning and one at the end. The rest of the story is done through beautiful illustrations of interactions between Carl (a Rottweiller) and a baby he's left to care for. For those who find that absurd I point to every story where children are abandoned by mothers (Cat in the Hat, Hansel and Gretel, for that matter every fairy tale ever written). It's fiction! Also it is intended for a pre-reading audience (I recommend 2-3 years) not those who will be judging its probability. As a speech language pathologist I find this book to be AMAZING for eliciting spoken language. You can ask what the baby is doing, where is the baby, how did that happen, or even "Can a baby swim in a fish tank???" Even my 2 year old son answers no. It's a great imaginative story with beautiful pictures, phooey to those who are shocked.
Rating:
Summary: A great "wordless book"
Review: It's not toally wordless.. there are a total of two sentences; one in the beginning and one at the end. The rest of the story is done through beautiful illustrations of interactions between Carl (a Rottweiller) and a baby he's left to care for. For those who find that absurd I point to every story where children are abandoned by mothers (Cat in the Hat, Hansel and Gretel, for that matter every fairy tale ever written). It's fiction! Also it is intended for a pre-reading audience (I recommend 2-3 years) not those who will be judging its probability. As a speech language pathologist I find this book to be AMAZING for eliciting spoken language. You can ask what the baby is doing, where is the baby, how did that happen, or even "Can a baby swim in a fish tank???" Even my 2 year old son answers no. It's a great imaginative story with beautiful pictures, phooey to those who are shocked.
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