Puppy Mudge Loves Everything... Except Baths

Mudge is a great big dog, and he doesn't like baths. Not at all. Fans of the Henry and Mudge series by Cynthia Rylant, the prolific author of the Poppleton and Mr. Putter and Tabby series and several others, might well already know this, as Rylant addresses the issue in Henry and Mudge in the Green Time, the third book starring the affable dog and the boy who loves him. In that book, Henry hoses Mudge down outside, despite the slobbery pooch's best attempts to avoid the drenching.

In Puppy Mudge Takes a Bath, Mudge doesn't look a whole lot smaller to me, but evidently he is small enough to be bathed in a tub - though Henry may want to re-think the logic of this arrangement, since in his desperation to get away, Mudge tracks mud all over the house, and once Henry does manage to pin him down in the water, the bathtub becomes a muddy cesspool. The tub is such a mucky mess, in fact, that I find it hard to believe Mudge could get any cleaner in there and even harder to believe that the previously clean Henry, who hops in with his dog, could. Maybe it is the mess caused by this bathing attempt rather than Mudge's size that leads to the outdoor bathing practices.

Henry and Mudge in the Green Time is more involved that Puppy Mudge Takes a Bath because the latter is only a pre-level one on the Ready-to-Read scale, while the former is a level 2. The Puppy Mudge series is written specifically for the most inexperienced of readers; this book is 26 pages long and consists of very short sentences, one or two per page.

The illustrations by Isidre Mones are in the style of Sucie Stevenson, who provided pictures for most of the Henry and Mudge books. These are cartoonish and amusing, especially the pictures of Mudge doing his absolute best to keep away from the boy with the power to get him all wet and soapy. I appreciated the fact that although they do not appear in the text, Mones shows us Henry's parents at one point, and I got a kick out of a little twist near the end that ought to provide some extra giggles for youngsters.

Every experience I've ever had with dog-bathing has been somewhat disastrous, so I find Puppy Mudge Takes a Bath to be both funny and true-to-life. Preschoolers who are fond of dogs are likely to fall in love with cheerful Mudge and sympathize with his plight, even as they allow themselves a laugh at his misfortunes.