FETCH!

A puppy has a rough first day of what’s effectively doggy kindergarten in a comical graphic adventure.

Peanut the floppy-eared puppy lives with Butter the cat and Crackers the dog. Crackers is excited to teach Peanut all about doggy school, where you learn to be a good dog (good dogs get treats). After Peanut and Crackers leave their crate at Barktown Doggy School, though, Crackers and the “middles” are separated from Peanut and the “littles.” Tiny Peanut is an easy victim for a pack of bully puppies (many of whom wear dog clothing of varying degrees of silliness). Butter and Crackers, upset by Peanut’s clear distress, are determined to help the youngest member of their “fur family.” The trio all get drawn into separate adventures, but when chance brings the aspiring rescuers together with Peanut in the pen with the big dogs, they collaborate to save one another. The cartoon illustrations are a good match for both the dogs’ exuberance and for the cat’s humorously careful posture of ennui. The straightforward linear panels, colored by Efird, will be easy to decode, but the switching point of view among Peanut, Butter, and Crackers as they have their separate adventures will be more of a challenge for younger readers. Final art not seen.

Characters seamlessly work both as pets with animal traits and siblings with recognizable new-student fears.