Kids books. It blows my mind what people will publish, and it’s even more confusing what becomes popular. In this weekly segment, we will randomly review a book Baby 1.0 picks off her bookshelf. It should be noted that these reviews are highly sarcastic, and in no way, shape or form should be taken seriously. I appreciate the effort anyone puts into writing a book, unless of course you’ve written a terrible book, in which case I will shame you publicly.

This week we are reviewing a book from the old classic Curious George series, Curious George and the Puppies. While I’m not sure about the popularity of this specific book, I can say it’s pretty popular in our house because it has pictures of dogs, which Baby 1.0 is currently absolutely obsessed with. Case and point, the following picture of Baby 1.0 walking her plastic dog at the park yesterday.

Curious George and the Puppies appears to be by Margret and H.A. Rey, although it was copyrighted in 1998, two years after her death, and 20 years after her husband’s death. I don’t know, maybe they had a ghost writer (get it, a ghost writer? Okay, I’ll stop)?

The book is your typical Curious George outline: Clueless man in strangely large yellow hat takes George out to do something mundane, forgets he is hanging out with a MONKEY, and trusts him to do something totally ridiculous. This begs the question, who is this man, and why is he treating this monkey like a child? A little googling will tell you George was captured by the man with the yellow hat, and taken across the ocean to go live in a zoo. Obviously, somewhere along their trip, the man with the yellow hat must have started feeling exceedingly guilty, hence his proclivity to let George now do whatever he wants, allowing him to behave like an ill-mannered tyrant completely unchecked. Typical modern day parent if I’ve ever seen one.

In this particular adventure, George and the man with the yellow hat go to the park and find a kitten. They decide to take the kitten to the animal shelter, which fits the typical pattern of behavior for the man with the yellow hat; find animal, put it in a cage. They bring the kitten to the shelter, where they are greeted outside by the director of the shelter like they are bringing a six-figure donation, rather than a single kitten. Because if there’s one thing animal shelters need more of, it’s kittens, said no animal shelter ever.

The man with the yellow hat tells George to hang out, alone, while he and the director “sign some paperwork” in her office with the door closed. Obviously they are boning. There is literally no other possible explanation.

George takes this opportunity to wreck shop. He ignores his instructions to “stay here and don’t be too curious,” and opens up a cage with 11 puppies, who then escape and terrorize all the animals. This interrupts the man with the yellow hat and the director, who emerge from the office with genuine looks of surprise to discover a monkey, left alone in an animal shelter, has caused mischief.

In the end, George is the hero because after he let all the puppies out, they led the director to the missing puppy, which I haven’t mentioned until this moment. There was one puppy who was missing. Spoiler alert: they found it. Then, perhaps being inspired by the true story of Koko and the Kitten, George adopts one of the puppies.

So there you have it. Baby 1.0 loves this book, and can sit through most of it most of the time, which says a lot because it’s 24 pages. I may be kind of a sucker for dogs, too, so I’m going to give it a 3.1/5.

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Image credits:

Trapped George: http://mentalfloss.com/sites/default/legacy/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/hat.jpg

Surprise!: http://user.xmission.com/~daina/ebola/Curious%20George%20and%20the%20Ebola%20Virus18.jpg

Koko: http://www.lifewithcats.tv/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/koko.jpg

Cover image: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2BFpR8zkhL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg