Book Review: No More Dead Dogs (middle school, football, school play)

No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman (Scholastic, 2017, 240 pages, $6.98, grades 5-7) (Caveat: The Korman books were purchased for review.)

Boring, Not!

A book review about a book report? How boring! But the prolific Gordon Korman makes it so not so.

Why This Book?

The first thing to catch your eye is the title, No More Dead Dogs.

The second thing to catch your eye is the cover illustration - a dog lying on his back but not looking especially dead (similar to the cover on the recorded book*). On the back cover is a sitting German Shepherd Dog wearing glasses! Hmmmmm. Why?

Or, the alternate front cover of a cartoon dog’s face with Xs for eyes and the circle with a slash mark meaning not or don’t. So, you  wonder if the dead dogs are real or if the dogs are really dead.

The third thing to catch your eye is the author, the wonderful and very prolific Gordon Korman of the Swindle series fame. So Dead Dogs will be fantastic, right?

The back cover also gives it away. You read that the dog always dies in children’s books plus a refusal to write a book report results in Detention.

Synopsis

We know what the book is about from the back cover but it is also about an unlikely but likable football hero who cannot tell a lie. This lands him in Detention when he writes an unacceptable book report and refuses to rewrite it as a good book. He is removed from the football team and ends up in the school’s play rehearsal with the drama nerds until he writes the report.

This middle school is unlike most – here, the kids can wrestle the play rehearsal from the drama teacher and our hero ends up rewriting the dead dog play a little bit every day.

And of course, there are budding romances as well as a girl who writes to Julia Roberts! And a kid who gets his similes and metaphors combined and all mixed-up.

For Boys and Girls Equally

Each chapter is written by either the main boy or the main girl in his or her voice, with a few chapters written by the girl’s friend or the drama teacher (but they all sound alike). Since few books appeal to both boys and girls, Dead Dogs is unique and worth reading (and a cheaper way to go if you have both a boy and a girl in middle school since they can both enjoy the same book).

Style

Like most children’s books, these middle school kids teach a lesson to the adults but in a humorous way. Each chapter has a couple of twists to the story or a couple of hilarious incidents that are unexpected.

If you have read the very cool, very exciting Swindle** series or even one of them, written about a decade after Dead Dogs, you will prefer the Swindles. Fortunately, Korman kept writing and only improved his skill at understanding kids and getting them into and out of dangerous plots.

Dead Dogs is a good start!

*The recorded book is on a CD.

**The Swindle books appear below.