Not a whole lot happens in Murphy’s day beyond scavenging for food, a trip to the vet, and a flurry of late-night barking, but that’s not really the point. The point is Murphy himself, a wide-eyed, hairy little terrier whose energy communicates itself through an all-upper-case text and staccato sentences. Murphy appears as a mass of wiry black hair, frequently rendered in multiple across a page to further emphasize his boundless enthusiasm. The oil illustrations feature a flat perspective with liberal use of white space; this provides a static background that further highlights Murphy’s antics. Provenson departs from lofty themes, delivering a spot-on interpretation of the inner life of a terrier, and the humor in many of the scenes is priceless. There is so little story that readers who do not share the author’s evident enthusiasm for dog psychology may well be unimpressed; dog lovers, however, should lap this up. (Picture book. 4-7)
