HENRY IS AN ARTIST

An artistic dog gets his day.

This book is about dog poop. Nothing more, nothing less. Well, maybe a bit more, if you view it in the right light. Henry is a tan, floppy-eared pup who’s trotting through an urban park wearing a jaunty red collar and a grin. He appreciates art, gazing upon a Keith Haring–style mural, and then admiring a garden of abstract sculptures. One sculpture is wavy and brown, foreshadowing the book’s premise: Henry makes sculptures of his own—his droppings. Readers may be a bit unenthused by Henry’s art; so is his owner, who quickly tosses his waste into the trash. But the park’s bugs know better. A coterie of ladybugs, ants, snails, and pill bugs transport Henry’s efforts to the surprisingly cosmopolitan, bustling Bug Hotel, where they can admire them further. The book raises humorous questions that it declines to answer: How can one consider poop sculpted? Is this artwork preserved in its current state or permitted to decay naturally? But the story will find a ready audience among those readers with a love of potty humor (and they are many). Beyond the gross-out factor, Henry’s happy-go-lucky energy calls to mind Harry the Dirty Dog and that classic canine Clifford, while Worsley’s expressive watercolors, painted broadly and simply, are perfectly lovely. Henry’s owner is tan-skinned, bespectacled, and bald.

Scatological humor and eye-catching images make for a delightfully oddball tale.