Dog Man by Dav Pilkey

Hey, Story Seekers!

We've got a police officer. We've got a police dog. We've got an explosion.

And somebody is about to propose a medical procedure I don't believe is covered by most insurance plans.

Dog Man is written and illustrated by Dav Pilkey, with color by Jose Garibaldi. It's the first book in the series, and if you've ever wondered why elementary-school kids carry these around like classified documents, I think I've worked it out.

They're fun to read.

Yes, I know how embarrassingly simple that sounds.

Stick with me.

If you're new to Book Explorers, I'm Jungle Jimmy the Book Explorer, children's author, dad, and longtime performer for kids. My expedition partner is Readit the Book Worm, who sees books from a lot closer to kid height.

He took one look at Dog Man and immediately wanted to know whether having a dog's head means you can still eat chocolate.

We are not starting there.

Book Breakdown

George and Harold, the two troublemakers from Captain Underpants, have been making Dog Man comics since first grade.

Now they're bringing him back.

The setup is completely ridiculous.

A police officer named Knight and his police dog, Greg, are injured in an explosion. Greg's body is dying. Knight's head is dying.

The nurse has an idea.

Attach Greg's head to Knight's body.

Everybody agrees this is a great idea.

That is how Dog Man is born.

I'm going to give you a moment.

Dog Man now has the strength and police training that came with Officer Knight's body and the brains and instincts of Greg the dog. He fights crime, chases villains, digs into things he shouldn't, gets distracted by ordinary dog business, and keeps running into Petey the Cat, whose plans range from evil to completely unhinged.

It isn't one long adventure. Kirkus lays out the structure: an origin story, a scheme involving a Robo Chief, an attempt to erase the words out of books, and an alien adventure.

Visually it looks like something kids made, because that is precisely the joke. George and Harold are supposedly drawing these comics. Thick outlines, hand-lettered dialogue, giant sound effects, deliberate spelling and grammar mistakes, and panels that move fast. Kirkus describes it as "brightly colored sequential panels with hand-lettered dialogue," which is exactly right.

Then there are the Flip-O-Ramas.

Pilkey gives you two images and tells you to flip the page back and forth so the pictures appear to move.

Is it sophisticated animation?

No.

Will a seven-year-old care?

Also no.

They get to make the book move.

Graphix published it on August 30, 2016, at 240 pages. Kirkus gave it a "Get it" verdict, and it went on to be a New York Times and IndieBound bestseller.

For teachers and librarians: Lexile GN390L, ATOS 2.6, 5,035 words, AR quiz 184237, 1.0 point. Scholastic puts the series at ages 7 to 10, grades 2 to 4. The GN prefix on the Lexile means graphic novel, which is worth knowing: a GN390L is not directly comparable to a prose 390L, because the measure is taken on the text alone and the pictures are carrying a large share of the story.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

Here's the thing adults miss about Dog Man.

A kid looks at a 240-page book and thinks, "I can read that."

That is a big deal.

Hand the same developing reader 240 pages of tight paragraphs and suddenly we're negotiating.

Dog Man has panels. Pictures. Speech balloons. Giant sound effects. Short bursts of text. Movement everywhere.

The page keeps paying you back.

Read a little, get a joke.

Read a little more, something explodes.

Turn the page, Petey has another terrible idea.

For a kid who hasn't yet decided that reading is something they do for fun, that matters more to me than whether an adult thinks the drawings look polished enough.

The roughness is the point.

George and Harold are making these comics. Their fingerprints are all over them. The spelling isn't always right. The grammar isn't always right. The pictures look like kid comics that got very, very good at being kid comics.

And then Pilkey shows readers how to draw the characters themselves.

That's the smartest thing in the book.

It never says, "Look what a professional author can do."

It keeps nudging the kid holding it toward, "You could make something too."

Now, the deliberate misspellings will bother some grown-ups, and I understand the complaint. If you want a book modeling perfect written English on every page, this is not it.

But I wouldn't confuse that with a kid not reading.

They're reading plenty.

They're following panel order, dialogue, captions, visual information, jokes, cause and effect, and several stories nested inside a framing story. They're working out what the pictures are telling them that the words never say.

And most of them keep turning pages.

You can't teach much to a kid who has already put the book down.

Readit's Review

Wait.

They put the DOG'S HEAD on the POLICE OFFICER?

That's how Dog Man happens?

I thought he was just born like that.

Also, Petey is a terrible cat.

He keeps inventing things and causing problems, which is honestly kind of cool except for the causing-problems part.

I like Flip-O-Rama.

You flip the pages really fast and they fight.

I would probably rip the page eventually.

Not on purpose.

Somebody tries to erase all the words out of books, which is the scariest idea in here and nobody seems that worried about it.

I would be worried.

And I want to draw Dog Man.

He looks possible.

Some characters look like if you try to draw them you're going to ruin your whole afternoon.

Dog Man looks like I could do it.

Reading levels for every Dog Man book, with Lexile, ATOS, word count and AR points.

What Others Think

This is one of those books where the reader reaction tells you something the sales numbers can't.

Goodreads has the first Dog Man at 4.10 out of 5 from 104,819 ratings. That is an enormous pile of response, and it is not all the same response.

The pattern I kept finding was kids laughing, kids wanting the next one immediately, and adults specifically mentioning children who had not been eager readers before.

One reader described her eight-year-old who "couldn't stop laughing" and recommended it specifically for reluctant or struggling readers.

Another described getting the series for a first grader who had started pushing back on reading aloud because it still felt hard. After book one he wanted book two, and went through the set.

A third reported her son starting Dog Man at six, and credited finishing a whole book with the confidence to move toward books with more text in them.

Those are individual experiences, not a promise about what this book does for every child. But three strangers describing the same arc is worth noticing.

Not everybody is thrilled. Some adults dislike the intentional misspellings. Others aren't fans of the potty humor or just don't connect with Pilkey's brand of chaos.

Fair enough.

This book knows exactly which table it's sitting at.

Kirkus praised the fast-moving comic adventures and gave it a "Get it." School Library Journal went further on the kid-creator angle, pointing out that the drawing instructions may push children to make stories of their own.

That's the part I'd hate to lose while everybody argues about the spelling.

Kids aren't only being invited to read the comic.

They're being invited to make one.

Belly Laugh Scale

5 out of 5: Laugh-Out-Loud Legend

I'm giving Dog Man the five, and I'm protecting the five while I do it.

This is not clever grown-up humor that children happen to follow. Pilkey is aiming directly at kids and hitting.

A dog doing dog things while trying to be a police officer.

A cat supervillain.

Explosions.

Flip-O-Rama fights.

Ridiculous inventions.

Some bathroom humor.

The book stacks one silly idea on another and keeps moving before you have time to ask sensible questions.

Good.

Sensible questions would ruin it.

More to the point, the reader evidence backs the laughing up. Kids aren't just finishing this book. A lot of them immediately want to know where the next one is, and 104,000 ratings is a big enough sample that I'm not reading noise.

That's a five around here.

Final Explorer Verdict

I'd hand Dog Man to second and third graders, graphic-novel fans, superhero kids, kids who like goofy or slightly gross humor, young artists who draw in every margin, and especially developing or reluctant readers who look at a traditional chapter book and see work.

The 240 pages look substantial enough to give a kid that wonderful "I read THAT whole thing" feeling, while the panels and short bursts of text keep every individual step manageable.

That combination is rarer than it sounds, and it is the entire reason this series does what it does.

And if your child finishes it and starts drawing comics?

Count that as part of the reading.

Stories don't only go into kids.

Sometimes they come back out.

If that's the direction yours is heading, How To Make Your Sock Talk is the book I wrote for exactly that moment. It's aimed at ages 5 to 10 and it doesn't tell another story. It teaches a kid to build a character and give it a voice, which is the same instinct Pilkey is poking at with those drawing pages.

Dog Man is on our list of the best books for 7-year-olds too, right at the top, for the same reason.

Readit has already wandered off looking for paper.

Probably a good sign.

Until our next expedition, keep exploring those books.

Jungle Jimmy & Readit