Plenty of quips in Dog Night at the Story Zoo
If ever there was a graphic novel geared toward young readers just begging to be made into a movie, this might be it.
Conceived by Vancouver children’s author Dan Bar-El (Audrey (Cow), It’s Great Being a Dad, Nine Words Max), the four stories are all delivered by dogs at an open-mike night at the Story Zoo.
This is a busy club inside the city zoological gardens where animals of all types gather to tell tales, and wag tails. It just happens to be dog night when we visit, and the place is howling.
Vicki Nerino is an illustrator who hasn’t worked on a book for kids before. For readers this is a plus because her style is more in an adult vein: angular, colourful and just the right amount naive.
From Boomer’s opening story about taking a fetching obsession to the next level to frenetic yapper Emma using her bark to great benefit, the narrative flows with occasional moments of standup jokes tossed in. These are something like the fictional animal world’s version of old Borscht Belt comic routines.
But that’s the point and, hey, a good lemming joke is hard to follow.
Bar-El’s language is full of quips and the kind of humour that could cause my niece to laugh so hard she would complain of stomach pain. In other words, the laughs are grown-up enough that children can work a little to get them and then guffaw and share.
Given the tendency of so many books for young readers — and graphic novels in particular — to be too slow and obvious, this book is a pleasant alternative.
It’s also filled with stories that deliver good messages without ever being preachy. Pursuing your passions to find happiness, not letting trying to fit in keep you from being you, and understanding others are all straight-up things to believe. If a bunch of comically rendered canines is delivering that message, all the merrier.
Perhaps the biggest surprise in this fairly lighthearted work is the chapter titled Tender on the Inside.
You may never be able to look at a bulldog the same way after reading it.
It would make for a very fine series of animated vignettes strung into a series or a movie, and the possibilities of subjects is as wide as the animal kingdom.