Chowder

September 4, 2006
Chowder, an English bulldog, baffles everybody with his precocious behavior. He uses the toilet and the computer, and while regular dogs chew bones, he excavates a dinosaur skeleton. His doting owners, Madge and Bernie Wubbington, tote him in a baby backpack; they "liked to think of him as quirky, but most people thought he was just plain weird." One day, lonesome Chowder spies a billboard for a megamart's new petting zoo: "All the neighborhood dogs had said Chowder belonged in a zoo, and he wondered if they were right." In bizarre events involving the supermarket and a kickball game, Chowder befriends the Critter Corral's captive pony, cow, sheep and others. With mixed results, Brown (Flight of the Dodo
) invests food shopping and zoo life with excitement. He composes smooth, meticulous paintings, and softens his sculpted pencil edges with a faint acrylic fuzz. Chowder's owners are disco-era throwbacks; their dorkiness helps account for Chowder's uniqueness, although the nerd jokes and the retro palette might be lost on younger readers. Brown pictures Chowder with melancholy jowls and sad, squeezed eyes; the most sympathetic pictures show his beady eyes widening and a drippy tongue lolling happily from his bulldozer-scoop underbite. Bulldog lovers may find Chowder endearing, but despite his offbeat pursuits, he remains elusive, and the convoluted, upbeat outcome feels like wishful thinking. Ages 3-6.

September 1, 2006
Gr 1-4 -Chowder is not like most bulldogs. Instead of burying bones, he busily arranges them into a skeletal formation, as an archaeologist would. He gets about town with his doting owners in the type of backpack that a toddler would ride in, and he uses the toilet like a human. His -quirkiness - leads the neighborhood canines to conclude that he would be better off in a zoo, so it is with mounting excitement that he spots the grocery store -s new -Critter Corral - through his balcony telescope and looks forward to making friends there. Brown -s static, acrylic-and-pencil compositions and the repetition of visual elements across the page yield strong designs. The rounded figures and precise patterning suggest a Playmobil™ world, with a touch of texture. The scenes depicted through the telescope are circular close-ups, framed in black. The parting shot, showing how Chowder communicates with his new friends even when they can -t be together, requires a bit of visual sophistication, as does the book in general. Its wacky comedy and the quest for acceptance will best be appreciated by those who -ve been around the block a few times. Fans of Anthony Browne and Craig Frazier will sit up and beg for more." -Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library"

Copyright 2006 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2006
" Inventive" is the best word to describe the design--as when Brown uses the book's gutter to move Chowder from the zoo's bathroom (where he's doing his business again) to the tree. But along with the glitz, there's also a real story here, starring a winsome protagonist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)