How to tell if your child knows the narrator is wrong

Why this is the one thing worth checking

The Demon and The doG is narrated by Damon, a demon with a job at the Demonic Defense and a high opinion of how that job is going. The reader is supposed to notice that his opinion and the facts do not match. That gap is the joke, and it is also where the faith in the book lives.

A child who sees the gap is reading a comedy about somebody getting it wrong. A child who does not see it is reading a story in which a demon explains things, and has no reason to doubt him. Same pages, two different books. Age on the cover will not tell you which one your child is holding. Fifteen minutes of watching them will.

The two minute check

Read the opening pages aloud, in an ordinary voice. Do not perform the irony, because your tone would do the work for them. Stop at the first moment Damon is pleased with himself, and ask one question:

Then say nothing and count to five. The answer you want is not a correct one. It is a fast one.

Signs your child is in on it

• They laugh at Damon rather than with him, usually a half second before the line ends
• They predict the mistake: "that is not going to work"
• They argue with the narrator out loud, or roll their eyes at him
• They retell a scene by saying what really happened, then what Damon thought happened

Any one of these is enough. A reader who corrects the narrator has understood the form, and can be left alone with the book.

Signs they are taking him at his word

• They retell the story as a flat list of events, with Damon's verdicts repeated as facts
• They ask why the book is saying something that sounds wrong, and seem worried rather than amused
• They ask you whether Damon is the good guy
• They go quiet, and the book stops moving from the nightstand

None of this is a comprehension problem and none of it reflects on the child. Holding what a narrator says alongside what is actually happening is a real step, it tends to arrive somewhere around six or seven, and it does not arrive on a birthday. The published range for this book is ages 7 to 12, which puts the youngest readers right at the edge of it.

What to do if they are not there yet

Read it aloud instead of handing it over. This time, perform it. Your voice carries the irony the page cannot, the way an adult's raised eyebrow tells a child that a pantomime villain is not to be believed. At 83 pages it is a handful of evenings. There is more on that in reading it together.

Or wait. A book that confuses a child at seven can delight the same child at eight. Putting it on a shelf for a year costs nothing.

Do not explain it. The tempting fix is to say "the demon is wrong, you see, and the lesson is this". That turns the book into the lecture it was written to avoid, and a child who has been told the answer never gets the pleasure of catching Damon out alone.

Where this check fails

It is a kitchen table test, and it has holes.

The agreeable child. Some children read your face and give the answer you seem to want. If the reply comes slowly and ends with a question mark, treat it as a guess.

The quiet child. Plenty of readers get the joke completely and show nothing. Silence is not evidence either way. Look for it later instead: a quoted line at dinner, a smirk, the book being carried around.

It measures one thing. A child can understand the narrator perfectly and still find demons unsettling at bedtime. That is a separate question with a separate answer, on is it too scary.

It only covers this book. The A.I. and The Alien is longer, 171 pages, listed for ages 10 to 12, and asks different things of a reader. Passing this check says nothing about that one.

If the check leaves you unsure, tell Bryant the age and temperament of your reader. He will tell you whether this is the right book, point you at the other one, or tell you to wait a year.