Mr. Putney's Quacking Dog (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mr. Putney's Quacking Dog Deborah Stevenson Agee, Jon. Mr. Putney's Quacking Dog; written and illus. by Jon Agee. di Capua/Scholastic, 2010. [48p.] ISBN 978-0-545-16203-6 $16.95 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 2-4. Wanna meet Mr. Putney's friends? Sure you do, because each introduction is essentially a Putney-personalized version of a "What do you call … ?" riddle with an animal-based portmanteau (portmanimal?) as the punchline. For instance, "Who wakes Mr. Putney up in the morning?" is answered with "An alarmadillo"; Mr. Putney enjoys jumping through an anteloop, his private locomotive is a traindeer, [End Page 4] and his house is watched by a guardvark. There's a sweet purity to the comic premise, and a pleasing inventiveness in the punchline critters themselves; kids will not only snicker at the jokes, they'll likely recast them into the more traditional riddle form and tell 'em themselves. While the illustrations have a little more solidity than usual for Agee, with smooth brushed black outlines instead of soft pencil ones, there's still a poker-faced milquetoasty air to their pale seriousness—if Bob Newhart were picture-book art, this is what he'd look like. With his taste for slip-on shoes and carefully pulled up socks, big glasses, and balding dome, Mr. Putney looks like somebody's dorky uncle, but he strides with confidence through his strange yet amiable world, where his worst scourges are an ice-cream thief (a crookadile) and a loud marsupial with cymbals (a clangaroo). Read it aloud, give youngsters a chance to read it alone, or use it as a prompt for further portmanteau creations—it's all goofily good. Oh, and Mr. Putney's titular quacking dog? A duckshund, of course. Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois