Flawed Dogs The Year-End Leftovers At The Piddleton "Last Chance" Dog Pound

by Breathed, Berkeley

• ISBN13: 9780316713597
• ISBN10: 0316713597
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-17
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Summary

Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and children's picture book author Berkeley Breathed crafts a remarkable, hilarious, and yes, even poignant celebration of "flawed dogs": "The bent and plain,/ The unbalanced bod,/ The imperfect people/ And differently pawed." At the core of this "2004 Catalogue of the Piddleton Dog Pound's Very Available Leftovers" is Heidy Strudelberg, "Garbo, Joan of Arc, and Mother Teresa of the nation's unwanted dogs: a reclusive warrior-saint of poundpups." Breathed reveals how Heidy was ousted from the high-falutin' vanity dog breeding world when she awarded a muddy three-legged street mutt the Westminster Best in Show ribbon. Now, it seems, Heidy has retreated to the Vermont mountains to run the Last Chance Dog Pound, where defective dogs go for one more attempt at getting adopted. The bulk of Flawed Dogs, once you've laughed your way through the introductions and formalities, is a gallery of pathetic pups with accompanying verses. A picture of an extra-long Dachshund startling the dishes right out of her mistress's hands, is captioned thus: "Here's Sal, it seems no one wants her./ Her ends will stroll off and wander./ A long doggie weenie/ Of noisy linguine/ Sal barks at her butt way down yonder." Dog lovers will be all in a tizzy to get their hands on this crazy, wonderful salute to blemished beagles and faulty foxhounds everywhere. (Ages 8 and older) --Emilie Coulter

Author Biography

Berkeley Breathed, one of America's most popular illustrators, is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartooning. His comic strip "Bloom County" ran for years in newspapers around the world and his books of the collected cartoons include the bestsellers 'Toons for Our Times and Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things. His highly acclaimed picture books, A Wish for Wings That Work: An Opus Christmas Story, The Last Basselope, Goodnight Opus, Red Ranger Came Calling, and Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big have been hits with children and adults alike.

Berkeley Breathed lives, works, and surfs in Montecito, California.