Dr Dog

Name: William Joseph
Price range: $

by Babette Cole

Interest age: 5+
Reading age: 6+

Published by Random House Children's, 1996

Classics
Funny

About this book

Doctor Dog is the Gumboyle family's favourite pet and their trusty personal physician - but when he jets off to a medical conference in Brazil, the family struggle to survive without him. Doctor Dog is summoned home to find everyone is sick: Gerty has tonsillitis, Kev has lice, Baby has tummy ache, Fiona has earache and grandad has awful wind.

Cole's funny illustrations demonstrate serious but easy-to-understand facts about personal hygiene, such as washing your hands, wearing a coat and not picking your nose - or, as Doctor Dog eloquently puts it, 'Never scratch your bum and suck your thumb'.

Doctor Dog explains each ailment with a detailed diagram, which makes the story equally enticing for kids with a predilection for non-fiction. And it all ends with a fart joke, as grandad ignores Doctor Dog's warning not to eat any more baked beans and blows the roof off with a single gust. What more could any five-year-old ask for?

About the author

Babette Cole was born in Jersey in the Channel Islands. She graduated from Canterbury College of Art in 1973 and was the illustrator and author of more than 150 witty, imaginative, irreverent and thought-provoking picture books for children including the bestselling, stereotype-defying Princess Smartypants. She produced animated storyboards for the BBC and illustrated numerous greetings cards and books by other authors as well as her own. Babette adored the countryside and was a keen horse rider and breeder. She spent much of her life in Lincolnshire, before moving to Kent and then westward through Dorset, Devon and Cornwall.