Book Review: Dogs are People, Too (dogs, cartoons)

Dogs are People, Too (A Collection of Cartoons to make Your Tail Wagl), by Dave Coverly (Henry Holt Publishing, 2015, 214 pages, $12.99)

Great Canine Cartoons

Oh, my gosh! Where have we been, not to have seen these great canine cartoons? How have we survived without knowing about Dave Coverly of Speed Bump* fame?

The cover will draw you in. And keep you there.

The top picture shows a dog smelling another dog’s butt but the first dog is wearing a cone: the caption (in case you can’t read the small print) says, “Sorry. Forgot about the cone.”

Below is a black lab on the left and a white amateurish childish stick-figure drawing of a dog on the right with the captions: on the left, “Labrador” – on the right, “Labradoodle.”

Bark Box, too!

The author-cartoonist, Michiganer Dave Coverly, is someone whose work you already know if you are a subscriber to that monthly goody-box for dogs, Bark Box. Coverly’s drawings adorn each box, the Facebook pages and the newsletter. Would you believe his dog depictions are called ‘doodles’? Bark Box even interviewed Coverly here and included several of his doodlings.

Visual Jokes

Two hundred fourteen pages of smiles in 10 chapters such as Dogs Behaving Badly; All Dogs Go To Heaven (Even the Ones Who Behaved Badly); Sniffing, Barking, Eating, Pooping (You Know, Stuff Dogs are Good At); and Dogs are (Smarter Than) People. Too.

Coverly also shows us the dogs of his life: from Shag to Tigger to Steve to Kenzi and the current Macy, thay all have their stories told in a couple of pages of prose with photos. Coverly loves mutts!

And Your Favorite Is. . . . .?

The staff here at DogEvals has too many favorites! What I like best about Coverly is that I understand most of his visual jokes (unlike Bob Hope and Jack Benny whom I had to try to laugh at). Unfortunately, Coverly only has one book of canine cartoons. So far. 

Read More About it: Here is an interview by Bark Post about Coverly being the Bark Box illustrator. So you-all are really familiar with my new favorite cartoonist but didn’t know it!

 *Speed Bump is a single-panel comic that has appeared in newspapers since 1994. It now appears in more than 400 papers and sites including the Washington Post, the Toronto Globe & Mail, the Chicago Tribune and the Indianapolis Star.