Be careful what you wish for--that's Kelly DiPucchio's (Zombie in Love) message in this humorous tale of a boy-dog swap.
Charlie, a boy tired of practicing his letters, drawing pictures, making excuses and even "tired of being tired," pines for a different life. "I wish I was a dog," he says to the brightest star in the sky one Sunday night, as his pooch, Norman, slumbers peacefully nearby on his dogbed. Come Monday morning, the switch is complete. Charlie's mother pats Norman's head, while Brian Biggs portrays Charlie (on the dogbed) using his right foot to scratch behind his ear. Biggs's depictions of Norman attempting human activities with a dog's anatomy steal the show. The canine's gray spots in lieu of the rosy cheeks of his human classmates play up the parody. His thick black outlines and splashes of egg-yolk yellow, grape and poppy shades lend his vignettes just the right amount of a comic-strip quality. While it's not always apparent why Charlie, as a dog, sometimes operates as a two-legged creature and other times as a four-legged one (he plays fetch on two legs and drinks from a toilet on all four), what becomes crystal-clear is Charlie's contentment with being who he is by story's end.
A touching scene of Charlie banished to the back yard while Norman stands on his hind legs at the door affirms their bond. Soon all returns to normal for Norman and Charlie. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness