Children's Picture Books

Dogs Don't Brush Their Teeth!

By: Diane deGroat and Shelley Rotner
Publisher: Orchard Books
Publication Date: August 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0545080644
Reviewed by: Holly Connors
Review Date: February 2010

Do dogs brush their teeth? Do they drive cars or play in a musical band? Dogs Don't Brush Their Teeth! asks, and answers these and many other silly questions about dogs in a delightlful way that will have youngsters laughing and eager to turn the page.

In this book, young readers are asked what dogs do in a silly and imaginative way. First, we see a picture of a dog lying on the floor eating out of a dog dish. The caption reads, "Dogs Do". With the use of fold-out pages, we're shown what "Dogs Don't" and in this example, there's the same dog sitting at the dinner table, cutting his meat with a steak knife. Dogs do eat dog bones, but they don't floss their teeth! Dogs do sniff to say hi but they don't shake hands, er, paws.

Authors deGroat and Rotner have mixed photos of real dogs (Rotner is a photographer) with drawings of objects around the dogs to create a funky real world/imaginary world scenario. At the end of the book are photos of all the participating dogs along with their names and breeds. I'm not sure how the photographer and owners managed to get their dogs to pose in all the odd and funny stances, but they are to be congratulated for their patience.

Quill says: If your child loves dogs, he/she should love Dogs Don't Brush Their Teeth!

For information on how the authors created the wonderful dog images, please visit Dogsdontbrushtheirteeth.com. Once there, you'll see a link to "How We Did It." There's a section for the Photoshop technique, step-by-step, and a section for the various cover changes.

To read Feathered Quill's interview with the authors, please click here.