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A review by larrys
Lord of the Fleas by Dav Pilkey
2.0
My ten year old would give this five out of five stars but this isn't her account.
I can see the appeal, though to me this is like turning on ABC 3 to a random show and having it babble at you. In full disclosure, I thought the first Dogman was pretty good. But this one is structured around the following running gag, which I guess we're to interpret as metafiction, since the entire story is bookended by the boys from Captain Underpants writing the comic:
What is it with you and POOP?
Look, you can't just tell the same joke... over and over... and expect it to still be funny!
You can't do the same things... again and again... and expect to get a laugh! Ya gotta avoid repetition...shun redundancy...eschew reiteration... resist recapitulation... and also, stop telling the same joke over and over!
[...]
Why do you keep telling these stupid jokes?
Because it's distracting.
Distracting from what?
[...]
Ya just gotta switch expectations!
The guy who founded the Onion divides humour into 11 categories and this would be a (fairly rare) example of metahumour -- humour about humour. It relies on quite a high level of sophistication from the reader, and I guess this is why Dogman is said to appeal to both kids and adults. I guess I'm a little skeptical. I feel like Pilkey ran out of 'actual' (diegetic -- non-meta) jokes. So we get a lot of non sequitur jokes from the young cat (which parents will relate to) and a lot of poop on the head jokes.
It is what it is.
Regarding the power of reading: The carrot of a preorder got my kid to memorise her three and four times tables.
Addendum, because this annoys me more than I can say.
Dav Pilkey's biography at the end says that 'as a child he suffered from ADHD'. My ADHD daughter was delighted to learn Dav Pilkey is a fellow ADHD creative. I'm less keen to teach her that ADHD equates to 'suffering'. Pilkey did suffer, but not from his ADHD -- from a school culture which didn't recognise the neurodifference and cater for it.
Also, Dav Pilkey is still and always be made of the ADHD phenotype. The phrasing used in his bio perpetuates the myth that kids grow out of ADHD, like they get a box on their eighteenth birthday and inside they get a neurotypical brain.
I can see the appeal, though to me this is like turning on ABC 3 to a random show and having it babble at you. In full disclosure, I thought the first Dogman was pretty good. But this one is structured around the following running gag, which I guess we're to interpret as metafiction, since the entire story is bookended by the boys from Captain Underpants writing the comic:
What is it with you and POOP?
Look, you can't just tell the same joke... over and over... and expect it to still be funny!
You can't do the same things... again and again... and expect to get a laugh! Ya gotta avoid repetition...shun redundancy...eschew reiteration... resist recapitulation... and also, stop telling the same joke over and over!
[...]
Why do you keep telling these stupid jokes?
Because it's distracting.
Distracting from what?
[...]
Ya just gotta switch expectations!
The guy who founded the Onion divides humour into 11 categories and this would be a (fairly rare) example of metahumour -- humour about humour. It relies on quite a high level of sophistication from the reader, and I guess this is why Dogman is said to appeal to both kids and adults. I guess I'm a little skeptical. I feel like Pilkey ran out of 'actual' (diegetic -- non-meta) jokes. So we get a lot of non sequitur jokes from the young cat (which parents will relate to) and a lot of poop on the head jokes.
It is what it is.
Regarding the power of reading: The carrot of a preorder got my kid to memorise her three and four times tables.
Addendum, because this annoys me more than I can say.
Dav Pilkey's biography at the end says that 'as a child he suffered from ADHD'. My ADHD daughter was delighted to learn Dav Pilkey is a fellow ADHD creative. I'm less keen to teach her that ADHD equates to 'suffering'. Pilkey did suffer, but not from his ADHD -- from a school culture which didn't recognise the neurodifference and cater for it.
Also, Dav Pilkey is still and always be made of the ADHD phenotype. The phrasing used in his bio perpetuates the myth that kids grow out of ADHD, like they get a box on their eighteenth birthday and inside they get a neurotypical brain.