Feiffer, Jules. Bark, George. Michael di Capua Books, 1999.

So many dog and cat books in the world! But some of them stand out as especially funny or endearing or living. Bark, George is one of the attention grabbers.

Cartoonist Jules Feiffer wrote and illustrated Bark, George, and the story really is a sort of cartoon or joke. George the dog moos and meows and oinks and quacks when his mother tells him to bark. So Mother Dog takes George to the vet to see why George can’t or won’t bark. The answer to George’s barking problem will make preschoolers and even older children laugh out loud, and the ending to the story leaves the reader with both a resolution and a question. At least, it left me wondering, in a good way.

You may recognize Feiffer’s artistic style from his illustrations for The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Jester. The people and The people and the animals are rather elongated and cartoonish, as befits a cartoonish and jokey picture book. The pictures of George and his mother and the vet are imposed on solid but brightly colored backgrounds which makes George and company pop out and look as if they might hop off the page at any moment.

I added this book to Picture Book Preschool because children like funny and because it makes a great read aloud book, either at bedtime or for morning time. The suspense of finding out what will come out of George next, as the reader turns each page to the next, is irresistible.

Betsy Bird at Fuse #8 writes about Bark, George, calling it her “favorite read aloud book of all time.”