ALWAYS IN TROUBLE

Toby is a tan-and-brown pooch of indeterminate breed but distinctly and determinedly naughty behavior. Each day of the week he gets into a different sort of mischief, from eating homemade bread to chewing buttons off a new coat. He is taken to obedience school, where he learns basic commands, but he reverts to mischief-mode as soon as he gets home. After an additional session of residential obedience school, Toby returns home a changed dog: He vacuums, folds laundry and bakes bread all by himself. But no dog is perfect, as illustrated by the final, surprising spread, which shows Toby’s exasperated owners at the park, with the dog leash stretching right across the spread. A zigzag cutout in the last page offers a glimpse of Toby, who has escaped right out of the story and onto the endpapers, in a hilarious finale. The short text, repetitive story structure and Jones’s simple but amusing cartoon-style illustrations add up to a solid offering in the naughty-dog division, but the boundary-breaking ending is the tail that wags the dog for this canine caper. (Picture book. 3-7)