MIGHTY READER AND THE BIG FREEZE

Learning to read isn’t so scary when Mighty Reader’s around.

Shy, new student Hugo—a brown puppy with black ears—searches for a friend on the bus. He ends up in an open seat next to bulldog Barkley, who’s reading a book about a superhero named Mighty Reader. When the canine students get to school, substitute teacher Ms. Wulff (a wolf, naturally) prepares the students for an author visit—from Will Hillenbrand. When Ms. Wulff asks Barkley to read the visiting author’s latest book, Spring Is Here (a real book from 2011), Barkley freezes. Sensing distress, Hugo heads to the dress-up center and secretly dons a Mighty Reader costume. As Mighty Reader, Hugo offers Barkley encouraging advice: “Look for words you know,” or “Think about what is happening in the pictures.” Barkley regains confidence and finishes the read-aloud just as Hillenbrand (as a schnauzer) introduces his work and artistic process. The comic-book layout, with at most four panels per page, combines minimal narration with speech bubbles. Hillenbrand’s expressive canine cartoons, boldly outlined in black against solid-color backgrounds, practically jump off the page. Some sentences are on the complex side, but the strong picture-to-text relationship will aid in decoding. Though the metafictive elements smack of gimmickry and self-promotion, readers may enjoy spotting the covers and pages of Hillenbrand’s other texts within this one.

An em-paw-ering read for young pups.