Book Review: Waggin' Tales, A Red and Rover Cartoon Collection

Waggin' Tales, A Red and Rover Cartoon Collection, by Brian Basset (Andrews McMeel, $10.95, 2004, 127 pp)

Everyone has a canine cartoon book, right? At least a Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock coffee table book. DogEvals also highly recommends Waggin' Tales with Red and Rover. And Fun's Never Over.

And to learn how this "fantastic duo" got its start (the heartfelt story of how homeless Rover saved Red's life and became his Guardian Angel Dog), start with book two. Red and Rover: A Boy, A Dog, A Time, A Feeling.

Red and Rover: A Boy, A Dog, A Time, A Feeling.

Rover, of course, is a dog and Red is his 10 year-old sidekick of a boy, Red. Like Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Red and Rover can talk to each other as the dog helps the boy grow up. Red (the one with the red hair and freckles - Rover is a blond) can't wait to grow up because, as he explains to his best friend dog, that means his big brother will also grow up and go off to college - then Red will get his room! What younger sibling has not thought of that!

How It All Started

An editorial cartoonist in Seattle who evolved into a comic strip cartoonist, Brian Basset began drawing the cartoon cover for the annual Seattle Humane Society fundraiser brochure which then naturally morphed into the "a boy and his dog" comic strip. Is it autobiographical? Perhaps.

Basset created the Red and Rover daily comics in 2000 in the Washington Post ("Democracy Dies in Darkness") but they are set in the 60s and 70s - remember when kids went barefoot in the summer and rode their bikes everywhere, coming home only for lunch and when it got dark out? 

Three years later, in 2003, Red and Rover won the prestigious Reuben Award for the Best Newspaper Comic Strip of the Year! And to think we here at DogEvals didn't discover the boy and his dog until 2022! However, we quickly made up the time. Basset has published three books so far.

A Boy and His Dog

Son of a cartoonist and life-long lover of dogs, Basset was destined to show us the lighter side of growing up with a dog. And, yes, he also had red hair and freckles as a kid. His comic dog, Rover, however, is neither a basset nor the German Shepherd Dog of his childhood, but a sort of yellow lab and with such an original name (Rover), you just gotta love this duo!

The Verdict: We love this book and love both Red and Rover!