Dog Man by Dav Pilkey book review

This book is the first book in the Dog Man series by Dav Pilkey. The story starts off with a behind the scenes look at George and Harold, who have been friends since kindergarten, and have been making comic books together. Dog Man was their first comic, but by 4th grade, they had moved on to making Captain Underpants. Then they got nostalgic and wanted to go back to more simpler times with Dog Man.

Officer Knight and Greg the Dog are cops, who are not very good cops and always getting yelled at. They want to be heroic. Officer Knight is tough, but not very smart. Greg is smart, but his dog body holds him back. Petey wants to eliminate them because they might try to be heroic working as a team. Petey makes a bomb and Officer Knight and Greg are hurt. The only way to save them is by attaching Greg’s head to Officer Knights body. The surgery is successful and now Dog Man is the best cop ever. As the story goes on, Dog Man still gets yelled at because he does some dog-like things. But he is determined to be a hero. In the following chapters, there is some silliness, some hot dogs, lots of slobber and lots of good intentions. Evil is thwarted.

I think this book will appeal to a large range of readers. I think this book is the perfect book for kids who say they do not like to read. I think it will take readers who have been labelled "struggling" feel like they can read a book. It will engage readers from both the visual and artistic aspects because it is a graphic novel. I think it will make kids who like to doodle in school feel like what they like to do is valuable. It will connect students who get in trouble at school with the author and make them feel like they are not alone. Every school library should have the whole series in their library. They will be widely circulated between the students who say they love to read and students who say they are not readers. Having heard Dav Pilkey speak about his challenges with school and with being assigned various labels, I can see where that influences his work in this book. For example, the teacher letter getting Harold and George in trouble for not following the directions exactly. There are students who need to connect with these stories. As educators, if we truly want to give readers a choice in their reading material, we will allow students to read this book. Some of the challenging vocabulary in this book is accompanied by visuals that readers will be able to infer meaning from. This book is quite lengthy, so readers will feel accomplished by getting through a longer chapter book. This book is also just fun.  There is nothing wrong with reading a book for pure enjoyment.  If you don’t already have this book in your elementary or middle school library, you should get it right away! It also makes for a good gift.