MY DOG NEVER SAYS PLEASE

Dogs don't have rules of etiquette to follow, and Ginny Mae is envious. Ol' Red gets to chew with his mouth open, lick his plate clean, and snooze in his doghouse all day, while Ginny Mae is constantly told to mind her manners. In a fit of anger, she finally tells her family she's moving in with Ol' Red. It's great, for a while, but by the end of the book she's thinking about inviting herself inside for dinner. While the broadly funny cartoon pictures capture the silliness of this tale, they treat the colloquialisms of the story generically, and don't address the folksiness of the text. Still, enough readers have probably coveted their pet's setup to provide this switcheroo with a large human audience. (Picture book. 4-8)