Bogart and Vinnie: A Completely Made-Up Story of True Friendship by Audrey Vernick (review)

Vinnie, a "crazy-happy dog," is cluelessly and gleefully lost when he darts into the Wildlands Preserve. Once in the park, Vinnie joyously greets every wild animal he sees, including Bogart, a contentedly solitary rhino. After initial annoyance, long-suffering Bogart bemusedly tolerates Vinnie's presence in a relationship that's celebrated as an inspiring interspecies friendship by the Wildlands staff and mainstream media. Finally, Vinnie's family finds their lost pooch, and to ensure all the friends get to stay together, they take all the animals back to stay with them, where "everyone was happy. Except the neighbors." Vernick, author of Brothers at Bat (BCCB 6/12), takes a sly poke here at the popularity of animal-friendship stories, and kids with pesky siblings will likely see something of themselves in Bogart and Vinnie's relationship ("Vhey had formed the kind of family where one member loves the other and one wants nothing more than to be left alone"). The ending loses a bit of steam, but the manically eager Vinnie ("I love you! I'm Vinnie! Hi!") is a giggleworthy protagonist throughout. Cole's illustrations, a luminous mix of acrylic paints, ink, and colored pencil, are classically cartoonish, usually broken into fast-moving panels thick with speech-balloon dialogue (mostly from goofy, enthusiastic Vinnie). Keen eyes will appreciate the subtle indications in Bogart's facial expressions that he's just waiting for all this to go away. The comic-style approach and sustained irreverence will make this appealing to kids just beginning to discover that books know how to be sarcastic too.