Dog Man; Dav Pilkey

From the creator of Captain Underpants comes a new hilarious serious that will have readers howling with laughter.

A new crime fighter is in town…meet Dog Man. After Officer Knight and his canine police dog, Greg, are injured in an explosion both their lives hang precariously in the balance. With neither’s chances of survival looking good, life-changing surgery is needed and the police force soon has a new recruit that is about to deliver his own brand of justice. Part dog, part man, Dog Man is ready for anything. And with mischievous moggy Petey in town, Dog Man is going to need all of his crime fighting skills to bring down the crooked cat…

The adventures of Dog Man and his battles with his arch-nemesis Petey are delivered over four chapters that are each self-titled and are their own individual stories. An origin tale starts things off and explains how Dog Man came to be. Subsequent stories pit Dog Man against his nemesis, super-villain Petey the world’s most evil cat. Petey is involved in the corrupt mayor’s plot to replace the police chief with a robot, tries to get rid of all the words in books to make everyone in the world insufferably dumb and attempts to rid the world of dogs whilst accidentally unleashing an army of hotdogs.

The brilliantly bonkers and zany stories follow a similar pattern. Petey escapes from prison, causes mayhem and it is up to Dog Man to save the day. There is bags of action, laugh-out-loud scenes and plenty of silly jokes often involving toilet-themed humour.

The action plays out in large comic panels that are bursting with colour and feature hand-written speech bubbles. At various points, readers will find ’Flip-o-Rama’ sections that are awesome, when these pages are quickly flicked between they create a funny moving animation. Instructions for drawing the characters, so readers can create their own comics, are provided at the back of the book.

A great read that is sure to attract the attention of the most reluctant readers.

Recommended for 7+.