{"id":377,"date":"2009-02-04T23:42:33","date_gmt":"2009-02-05T03:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/04\/review-of-down-girl-and-sit-bad-to-the-bone-by-lucy-nolan\/"},"modified":"2009-02-05T00:15:06","modified_gmt":"2009-02-05T04:15:06","slug":"review-of-down-girl-and-sit-bad-to-the-bone-by-lucy-nolan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=377","title":{"rendered":"Review of Down Girl and Sit: Bad to the Bone, by Lucy Nolan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bad_to_the_bone.jpg\"<\/em><\/p>\n

Down Girl and Sit<\/em><\/p>\n

Bad to the Bone<\/em><\/p>\n

by Lucy Nolan<\/p>\n

illustrated by Mike Reed<\/p>\n

Marshall Cavendish Children, 2008.\u00a0 53 pages.<\/p>\n

Starred review<\/p>\n

www.marshallcavendish.us\/kids<\/a><\/p>\n

I delight to think of a beginning reader decoding this book and\u00a0being rewarded all along the way\u00a0with hilarious inside jokes.\u00a0 Down Girl and Sit: Bad to the Bone <\/em>has four chapters, so it is for a child already reading.\u00a0 But the chapters are short, full of pictures, and laugh out loud funny in a way the narrator would never understand — but the reader does.<\/p>\n

Down Girl tells us the story of how she and her friend Sit attempt to train their masters with simple concepts.\u00a0 For example:\u00a0 “Cats are bad.\u00a0 Dogs are good.”<\/p>\n

The reader knows that Down Girl is completely misinterpreting her master Rruff’s intentions, as Down Girl earnestly explains how she loyally carries them out.<\/p>\n

Especially delightful and reminiscent of “Who’s on First?” is the\u00a0chapter after Down Girl and Sit tried to be “bad to the bone” to get attention.\u00a0 Their masters take them, along with another dog Hush, to Obedience School.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their poor\u00a0masters are not very quick learners!\u00a0 They keep calling Down Girl and Hush by Sit’s name!\u00a0 Then they start using the name of some dog named “Stay.”<\/p>\n

This could have gone on forever, but thank goodness a squirrel ran past.\u00a0 We all jumped.\u00a0 We barked and tried to chase him.\u00a0 Our masters yanked on our leashes.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Down girl!”\u00a0 “Sit!”\u00a0 “Hush!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally!\u00a0 They got our names right.\u00a0 Now they might pass the class.<\/em><\/p>\n

We looked to see if the teacher was smiling.\u00a0 He was not.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, I can’t blame him.\u00a0 We have been working with our masters for a long time.\u00a0 We haven’t gotten very far either.<\/em><\/p>\n

I wanted the teacher to cheer up, so I jumped up and kissed him.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Down, girl!” he said.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yes!<\/em><\/p>\n

I wagged.\u00a0 It is very, very hard to train a human.\u00a0 But sometimes, just sometimes, they can surprise you.<\/em><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Down Girl and Sit Bad to the Bone by Lucy Nolan illustrated by Mike Reed Marshall Cavendish Children, 2008.\u00a0 53 pages. Starred review www.marshallcavendish.us\/kids I delight to think of a beginning reader decoding this book and\u00a0being rewarded all along the way\u00a0with hilarious inside jokes.\u00a0 Down Girl and Sit: Bad to the Bone has four chapters, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,40,10,14,17,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-characters","category-beginning-chapter-books","category-childrens-fiction-review","category-delightfully-silly","category-humorous","category-starred-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}