Smarty Pup: Pawsome genius : To the rescue by Anh Do

The ability to communicate with your pet dog is something every child has dreamed of and by creating JJ the super intelligent pup Anh Do has produced another winning series for reluctant readers.  This is the third book in the series which began with Friends Fur-ever, and was followed by JJ and the giant panther.  Each story centres around JJ the rescue dog, his owner Lily and the things they get up to in their exciting day to day lives.  Because he is super-smart JJ often ends up saving the day when problems arise and a rescue is needed.  In this book the topic at school is careers and because the visit from the local Firefighters, Mr Do and Weir Do, impresses JJ so much he decides that a firedog will be his chosen profession. He even gets a mini fire suit that Weir found for him after it shrunk in the wash!  JJ builds a mini-copter for his Science week project that weekend, which ends up being a very useful tool when some pugs get caught in a burning building.  There is lots of action and minimal text in these highly colourful, illustrated pages.  The use of different sized fonts and speech bubbles make these stories easy to read and the lenticular animated front cover attracts readers from the start. At the back of each book there is also a page of stickers related to the story.

Themes: Dogs, Fire-fighting, Friendship, Inventions.

Gabrielle Anderson