Amazon.com Review
If you think living, breathing puppies are cute, wait until you see this fabulous book of photographs of fruit-and-vegetable dogs. Yes, Saxton Freymann and Joost Elffers (
Play with Your Food,
How Are You Peeling?,
One Lonely Seahorse) are back, with one of their best efforts to date. Not only are the doggies themselves endearing and clever (the broccoli-tufted French poodle is pure genius), but the wordplay and visual punch lines are terrific as well. "Chilly dog," crafted from a potato, shivers next to a mushroom snowman. "Dog bowl," contrary to what you might envision, is a dog made out of a radish, with a black olive on its paw, poised to topple banana-tip bowling pins. "Dog catcher," reveals a jalapeño dachshund catching a squash Frisbee in midair. "Let sleeping dogs lie" you say? There they are, sleepy, sleepy banana peel dogs at the end. The eye-popping endpapers showcase the entire kennel of creations on a bright turquoise background. This immensely appealing book will be irresistible to almost any human, but dog (and produce) lovers will sprout wings and zoom skyward. (Ages 4 to 104)
--Karin Snelson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In How Are You Peeling?, Freymann and Elffers sought out wrinkly, bulging fruits and vegetables and applied beans to form eyeballs. The resulting veggie faces showed wit and a keen design sensibility. In Gus and Button and this volume, the artists no longer wait for the poetic moment. They slice and pierce vegetable chunks to create animal likenesses with less successful results. The title refers to the book's canine theme and artistic media. Each page features a common saying like "in the doghouse" and a visual play on words. For "dog paddle," which here has nothing to do with swimming, a green hound built from two pears backhands a ping-pong ball with a racquet made from a radish slice. "Pup tent" pictures a lettuce-leaf shelter and a red radish-puppy. Jalapeno peppers, with their tail-like stems and their variable coloration, come in handy for "sick puppy" (a queasy red and green) and "lucky dog" (who holds a cauliflower bone in his jaws). Even though the mushroom chunks and mangled potato parts are forced into service, whimsy prevails in the portraits of the frisee lettuce sheepdog, the broccoli poodle and the banana, cut lengthwise and laid flat to resemble two long yellow dogs with blunt black noses ("Let sleeping dogs lie"). All ages.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
