FRANK AND LUCKY GET SCHOOLED

When an unlucky boy and a lost dog find each other, their friendship leads to a lot of learning.

First they learn about each other; then they go to school. Lucky the black Lab goes to his school 10 times, but Frank the redheaded, white boy has to go thousands. But even when they’re not at school, they’re learning: botany and entomology from the plants and ticks Lucky picks up in his explorations; chemistry from their experiments about what will take away skunk odor; astronomy from the time they spend outside because Lucky is still too smelly; math—infinity is the number of biscuits Lucky is willing to eat, and at night, what fraction of the bed belongs to Frank and what to Lucky? But the duo’s favorite subject is geography—exploring the world around them, and that leads to other lessons of all kinds. Perkins’ pen-and-ink–and-watercolor illustrations use vignettes and speech/thought bubbles to marvelous effect. And the humor is hysterically tongue-in-cheek: “If a dog is sitting at the Horizon Line, he will look like a Silhouette….Then you will have to go get him and bring him home.”

As with Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith’s Math Curse (1995), this book should open readers’ eyes to the learning all around them. Of course, if they have learning companions like Lucky, so much the better.