These versions of Treasure Island and Robin Hood inaugurate a series called Dog-Eared Classics, in which well-known literary adventures are condensed into short chapter-books with an all-canine cast. John Bianchi’s computer-generated cartoon illustrations for these two books are brightly coloured and feature the dogs in period costumes amid interestingly detailed scenes. The pictures have a few weaknesses, however. Every shape is thinly outlined in black so that the dogs often look rigid despite their dramatic poses and facial expressions. Also, some of the shapes have been filled in with a uniform texture that looks like vinyl and calls attention to its automated source.

The narratives are well crafted. Frank B. Edwards has captured much of the tension that runs throughout the source tales and even reproduced some of the gentility of style in the 19th-century texts. The tone is not old-fashioned, exactly, but it has a pleasing crispness that comes from a challenging and well-managed vocabulary. The narrative point of view is not shaped according to a dog’s consciousness. Instead, the authors have made the characters behave exactly like humans, except for addressing one another as “pup” instead of “lad,” and “yipping” instead of laughing. These books might nudge readers toward the original tales, but even if they don’t, they deserve a place on the shelves as decent light entertainment.