Read Dog Man: Unleashed free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Dav Pilkey's Dog Man: Unleashed is a giggle-a-page comic for 7 year olds, starring a cop with a dog's head who just can't leave a squeaky ball alone.
It's the chief's birthday, so Dog Man is sent to the pet shop to buy him a fish. There's one rule. Don't come back with a dead one (Dog Man loves rolling in dead fish, so this needs saying).
He comes home with Flippy, a purple fish the shop is very glad to see the back of. Then a tub of brain dots tips into the bowl, and Flippy's brain starts to grow. And grow.
Meanwhile someone in a cardboard box mask robs the pet shop. The photo looks a LOT like Petey, the city's wicked cat. Petey is outraged, because he's been sitting in Cat Jail the whole time!
So he breaks out to catch his copycat, leaving behind a paper Petey he's cut out and coloured in. A witch doctor's spray brings the paper cat to life. Before long the city has two Peteys, a love ray, a tank full of treasure and a dinosaur skeleton stomping through town.
This is the second Dog Man book. A quick comic at the start shows how a cop and his dog ended up as one hero, so your reader won't be lost.
It's a comic from cover to cover, and the jokes come thick and fast. There are puns everywhere (which doctor or witch doctor?), huge shouty capitals and sound effects like SLAM and KLUNK.
There are Flip-E-Rama pages too, where your reader swipes back and forth between two pictures to make them move. The book explains how to do it on a screen. And there's a bonus comic at the back that George and Harold, the boys who draw Dog Man inside the story, supposedly made years ago, spelling mistakes and all.
Most children will whizz through it in one go and then go back for the jokes hiding in the pictures.
It's got a soft side as well. Petey's jail guard sobs over the paper cat, thinking the real Petey has been squashed flat, and Petey ends up in tears too. Who knew a villain could be so easily touched? The fights are all cartoon bonks and chases (paper beats rock, obviously).
If your reader wants to see where it all began, try the very first Dog Man book. It opens with George and Harold, who met in kindergarten and have been making Dog Man comics ever since.
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