Dumbheart

May 1, 2010
Gr 6 Up-This 10th collection of "Get Fuzzy" newspaper strips was originally syndicated in 2007. Rob Wilco and his two pets, Satchel Pooch and Bucky Katt, continue their daily misadventures of feline-vs.-canine competitiveness, misunderstanding the human world, and squabbling over word meanings and household rules. Each character embodies a strong personality, and their sheer proximity creates conflict and subsequent jokes. And Conley excels at providing a variety of absurd and fanciful logical extensions of his main and regularly appearing characters. In this volume, Satchel gets a personal trainer to help him work off some of his Shar-Pei flab, which leads to commentary about how easy it is to find animal by-products in food. A visiting pug wears a rubber glove as pants and quotes Shakespeare. Bucky creates an art exhibit of appliances that he has smashed and subsequently photographed. These may not, on the face of it, strike one as inherently comic, but the writing has a quiet silliness and a gift for finding bad puns and clever ripostes in almost every situation, and Conley is willing to build a slow burn to get there. Combined with the simple lunacy of the setting and the personable charm of the main trio, this continues to be an excellent comic."Benjamin Russell, Belmont High School, NH"

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.