It's a Dog's Life: How Man's Best Friend Sees, Hears, and Smells the World (review)

Who knows what Fido knows? Well, Fido does, or, in this case, Joe, the scruffy canine narrator of this factual overview of canine life, knows, and he's willing to tell. In breezy and readable style he explains the long relationship between humans and dogs, a relationship that started with a crucial human thought: "Ah, a garbage disposal that doubles as a watchdog." The book's main focus is doggy perception and behavior, offering facts about the human/dog difference ("Humans have 5 million special cells in their noses that detect smells. The average dog has about 220 million") and canine expressions (there's a "Woof/English dictionary") and answering a few quirky questions ("Why do dogs like to roll in gross stuff?"), concluding with a quick roundup of additional information. The sprightly and conversational approach manages to be energetic without being cheesy, and the information is simply and, save for a couple of vague spots, clearly conveyed. Slonim's cheerfully cartoony watercolors marry playfulness with information; his mutts pose for diagrams, chat in speech balloons, and model behaviors, and illustrative captions are often amusing as well as educational. With its goofy, informative charm, this has potential for readers hurried or reluctant as well as simply dog-loving, and it'll make a good advance from Calmenson's May I Pet Your Dog? (BCCB 6/07) and George's How to Talk to Your Dog (BCCB 4/00). A brief bibliography of books, both fictional and nonfictional, adult's and children's, about dogs is appended.