| Dogs, Kids, and Video Games |
December 2, 2009
Two recent books for kids are good additions to the family bookshelves. Flawed Dogs by Berkeley Breathed (creator of Bloom County) tells the story of one brave dachshund with a celebrated hair tuft and only three legs who falls in with the mutts of the world and leads them to glory, and even better, loving owners. There is one four-legged villain and many human ones, and at times I cowered under the animal cruelty exposed in this book. The age range for Flawed Dogs is eight to twelve but with the references to killing, revenge, and abuse, I would make sure the younger readers read this book with an adult companion. There is much to laugh at in the book, including the wonderful illustrations and Breathed's sly references to Bloom County ("platoons of behemoth penguins pretending to be nuns"), and just as much to warm the heart. The finale is heart-pumping and chock-full of action at the level of superhero and beyond. This is an exciting, fast-paced book, and sure to engage all readers.
Herbert's Wormhole by Peter Nelson and Rohitash Rao is written for boys who love video games and appears to have been written by them as well -- and I mean this as a compliment to the writing of Nelson and Rao. Nelson and Rao achieve what is very difficult to accomplish: they write a book that is genuinely on the level of their audience, capturing the talk, the concerns, the interests, and the imagination of boys aged eight to twelve. Girls will also find this book fun, although many parents may not get it. The plot involves boys forced into a play date who end up far in the future facing aliens in their home town. These aliens are very unlike the aliens in video games but in the end, the boys must use the same skills of quickness, improvisation, and absorption to get themselves to the next level and back home. The drawings in the book are the perfect accompaniment to the story, light-hearted and entertaining, and good fun all around.
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