The Life and Canine Times of Pee Wee and Buddy

The Life and Canine Times of Pee Wee and Buddy was written by daughter-father duo Casey and Todd Gent. The story centers around two dogs, Pee Wee and Buddy, who love to do all the fun things dogs love to do, like playing, sniffing around, and going to the dog park with their best friends (their owners). Buddy has three legs because he was hit by a car but says, “I’ve got three others that work just fine.” As Pee Wee and Buddy explore the neighborhood, they are bullied by some of the dogs who they do not pay any mind.

I love that this book was modeled after the Gent family’s real lives. Pee Wee and Buddy were their real pets, a dachshund/corgi mix and a three-legged beagle/bassett. Coby, Casey’s brother who suffered from cystic fibrosis, was Pee Wee’s best friend. I think it’s wonderful that Casey and Todd use their dogs to teach others to “befriend everyone and stick together when others are not so kind.” That being said, as I was reading this book, I often wondered what age group the book was meant for. The passages were long and wordy, and the story didn’t feel like it had any direction. It starts with the introduction of each dog and their adventures together. On one page, they are bullied, and although they ignore the bullies, they still have a dialogue between themselves about other dogs they knew who weren’t bullies. At first, I thought that was the lesson of the book, but this was the only page the bullies were addressed. After that, the story moves on to the dogs wondering when their best friends would return after leaving them home alone. The book stops abruptly when the best friends come home.

Although The Life and Canine Times of Pee Wee and Buddy is about just that. The story seems slow with the introduction but then moves very quickly with the bullying and missing the best friends. I would have loved to see the book split into several books. A book introducing the dogs and how they meet, one that centers around bullying but teaches readers a lesson about bullying and why we should be nice to everyone, and then a book about missing the best friends when they are left alone. The simplicity of the story made me think it was aimed at four to seven-year-old children, however, the amount of words in the book would never keep the attention of children in that age group. The illustrations were also very basic and a little boring. It would have been nice to have more illustrations in the book to accompany the story.

Overall, I felt the intention of the book was good, but the wordiness and quality of the illustrations really need to be cleaned up.