Bad Dog

Nina Laden
illustrated by the author

Walker & Company, 2000
$15.95 hardcover
32 pages

The postcard says "Free Range Chickens."

So off goes our dog hero dreaming of a free lunch. Before he's through he'll steal some hens, wreck a car, and commit some of the best puns you've ever howled at. And, just maybe, he'll find that chicken lunch he was looking for.

The first time you read Nina Laden's picture book Bad Dog it is a lively and funny story: the bored house dog slipping his leash for one wild day of freedom and causing all sorts of trouble. Then you start to notice just how deeply the humor of her rambunctious word play runs; I noticed more on every reading: the puns, the words with multiple meanings, the cleverly placed opposites, the twisted cliches and idiomatic expressions.

"No one was going to beat us to those chickens.
So we beat a path down the road.
We beat an oncoming train.
We didn't miss a beat."

A young reader will feel proud (and justifiably so) each time he or she learns to laugh at another of Laden's jokes. In any case, there is a certain smug superiority in knowing that you would never make the same mistake regarding "free range chickens." Our poor dog never stood a chance.

Laden's dogs are somewhere between dumb canine and human. That is, they wear clothes and can steal a car and drive it (with their heads hanging out the window!), but they are still dogs in a human world. Our dog belongs to a family who must reclaim him in the end.

Would that all doggy adventures end as safely.

Reviewed by Wendy Morris. © 2001 by Wendy Morris.

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