Dog Man

Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls
by Dav Pilkey

(My review from GoodReads)

Yes, yes I did. I made my students wait for this book until I had a chance to read it. Because I know after we start passing it from reader to reader I might not see it again until November. And I'm just going to say to the graphic novel haters and those who can't stand the fact that their kids/students read Dog Man books over and over again...read one. Better yet, read the whole series. These books are so good that they are WORTH reading again and again!

Dav Pilkey is a superhero. Who else is writing books for reluctant readers that quote Ernest Hemingway (page 50, panels 2 and 3...see the notes in the back of the book). Who else is creating chapter titles with allusions to great literature? (A Farewell to Arms and The Very Hangry Caterpillar were two of my favorites.) Who else is stretching readers with sentences like this tucked in the midst of sight gags, bad puns, and a superhero whose superpower is eating cupcakes: "As the soft, pink dusk of twilight blankets the city...one vigilant soul heeds the sounds of despair...and bravely responds. Masked in the deep shadows of the surrounding sun...and armed only with an unquenchable appetite...for cupcakes." And who else is making important themes so clear: "It's not enough to just BE GOOD. We gotta DO GOOD." "Love is something you DO! Sometimes you gotta DO it first...THEN you feel it!" "And (to paraphrase one of the plot lines), you can look at the world and see mud and weeds and pollution (and all the other problems) and believe that's all there is, or you can look at the world and find all the love and beauty. "This world has a lot of problems...but it could never be a horrible place...because you're in it."

I tagged this book 

2019, adhd, adventure, advice, allusions, animals, cats, dogs, family, friends, graphic-novel, humor, inspirational, knock-my-socks-off, parody, political, read, series, social-action, theme 

Yup. Check out all those tags. The "adhd" tag is kind of a joke. Haven't you noticed the name of the robot? 80-HD? Also, Dog Man undergoes behavior modification therapy in chapter 2 to help him focus. It backfires.

Read this book. Read this series. That is all.