Pampered house-dogs Brownie and Apollo lounge around the house, but their people never come home. After even the water bowls are empty and both dogs have to . . . well, go . . . and still no people come home, they decide they need to leave the house. Once they get outside, they find various clues that young readers will understand mething catastrophic has happened, and all the humans are gone. They encounter a friendly police dog, a clever flea who quotes from Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and, inside the local supermarket, a bulldog and a rat. However, a pack of mean dogs wants the supermarket's food supply. Using the animals' points of view allows the Proimoses, father and son, to tell a postapocalyptic story that younger readers can enjoy without seeing too much potentially scary mayhem. The big black-and-white art makes the animals goofy looking enough to keep the story fairly light, and with only a few panels per page, it's a quick read, too.

Spouting hysterically funny dialogue, two dogs await their people's return. Eventually desperate, they break out of the house, discover that all humans have disappeared, and make a grocery store their home. Challenged by some tough animals, they win because of a tick who dispenses military advice. Black-and-white comic panels add quirky humor, although it can be difficult to tell the characters apart.

Gr 2-5 An apocalyptic event has occurred and the only known survivors are a handful of house pets, a rat, and a Zen-wise spider who was trapped inside a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War . Brownie and Apollo, two dogs, are clueless as to what has happened outside their home and so set about their normal routine, first waking up and arguing over why Apollo gets to sleep on the couch, followed by Brownie looking for something to eat. After worrying about when their people will return home, the friends set out to search for food, only to walk out amid scenes of chaos and destruction, realizing that, in fact, all of the people have gone. Their search leads them to an abandoned grocery store where they make allies and come face-to-face with a rival pack who wants to overtake the store. The story is broken into 30 short, dialogue-heavy scenes. The paneled artwork has a distinctly hand-drawn quality and is printed in grayscale. This unpolished look at times makes it difficult to distinguish among characters. Despite it being the end of the world, the story feels as though it's missing an overall sense of urgency. As a result, readers may lose the gravity of the circumstances these characters live in or they may struggle to push through sets of uneventful scenes waiting for something to happen. VERDICT Though it has some quirky humorous moments, this dystopian graphic novel may struggle to find mass appeal with readers. Matthew C. Winner, Ducketts Lane Elementary School, Elkridge, MD