Review by Woodrow Phoenix

Lord of the Fleas begins as usual with an introduction from our two creators, 5th graders George and Harold. They tell us how, as a result of being made to read classic literature by their teacher they are now totally mature and deep, and therefore dropping references to these books in their writing. Although it must be pointed out that Lord of the Flies is not the same book as Lord of the Rings, which is why Harold flunked his test. Aside from a few puns which will amuse parents reading these books, there is no difference in the way the story is told, except that one of the villains is called Piggy – but is an actual pig rather than a badly behaved child.

Previously, Dog Man’s number one nemesis Petey tried to clone himself. Instead he got a tiny cute kitten who was nothing like him, and ended up living with Dog Man instead. Petey is still trying to make Li’l Petey into the evil counterpart he feels he should be, and much of the fun of this story involves Li’l Petey pushing back against his creator (who hates being called ‘Papa’) and almost convincing him that being good is better than being bad. We also get a second outing for all the superhero personas introduced in Dog Man and Cat Kid, with Dog Man returning as the Bark Knight, Li’l Petey putting on his mask and claws to become Cat Kid, and the reprogrammed robot 80-HD once more becoming Lightning Dude. Of course Petey also gets in on the action with his giant MechaPetey and there is a very entertaining sequence of giant robot fighting, making good use of Dav Pilkey’s ‘Flip-o-Rama’ pages in a battle with a huge mechanical dinosaur.

The how-to-draw pages at the back of this book feature Dog Man as the Bark Knight, Li’l Petey as Cat Kid and all the villains from this adventure. There is also an update on the ‘reading to your dog’ information from the previous book where Petey informs readers that experts say kids can get the same benefits by reading out loud to cats. In fact, kids can not only improve their skills and their confidence but also reduce their stress levels because cats don’t judge them when they accidentally skip words. Reading to cats is “a paws-it-ive experience”, Pilkey says. The next book in the Dog Man series is Brawl of the Wild.