Walter, the Farting Dog

Rating:
Summary: 32 year old and 54 year old make spectacle of selves
Review: My mom and I read this book yesterday and had tears running out our eyes from laughing so hard. We were causing a stir at the bookstore. Great story, good art, very funny. On our way home, my mom said, "I farted" and started laughing again.

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Summary: I Agree Daddy Reader, This Is The Same Story As DOG BREATH!
Review: Daddy Reader, Thank you for your review. I almost made the mistake of purchasing both books Dog Breath, and Walter The Farting Dog and I'm Glad I didn't because It's the same exact story except one has bad breath and the other one farts to scare away burgulars and becomes a hero. Well, if you like this story but you're not sure which one to choose, I suggest you choose dog breath. Drawings are of better quality. If your interested in a book about farting, I can recommend a better book That's hilarious. . . It's called PEE-EW IS THAT YOU BERTIE! I gave it 5 stars and it made me laugh so hard I cried! It's about a boy who passes gas frequently out in the open and how everybody in his family chastises him for doing so but he's not dumb! He knows that secretly everybody else in his family is doing it too and the excuses they make to cover it up ... example mom coughs when she farts so nobody will hear it and grandma simply blames the cat! You'll relate better to this book than WALTER THE FARTING DOG and you and your kids will have a great laugh together.

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Summary: Children Receive a Bad Lesson
Review: Dad decides to return to the dog to the pound? Walter just happens to get saved because burglers broke into the house? An adopted dog is not a throw-away item. There are already too many irresposible pet owners in the world. Let's not encourage it.

Rating:
Summary: This is not a childrens book
Review: Maybe it's okay for adults with a 4-8 year old mentality, but not for children.

Having just spent a lot of time at a focus group in which mother's discussed what to use in a child's mouth when he or she uses an obscenity, (soap seems to be the flavor of the month), to find a book with an obscenity in the title makes me cringe. How does one teach a child that certain words should not be used when the publishing industry not only uses them but sticks them in the title.

William Kotzwinkle, you should be ashamed of yourself. Or are you and your publisher that desperate for money?

I believe this book should be moved to the adult section/humor where it would be more appropriate.

Rating:
Summary: Putting things in perspective
Review: Is this the greatest kids' book ever? I certainly wouldn't try to make a case for that. Does it deserve the venom that some of the reviewers have directed at it? Hardly, but some people are coming as close as they can to alleging plagarism on the part of the author. Fart plagarism --- I never thought I would live to see the day.

Honestly, if anything written from this point forward involving dogs and flatulence is immediately going to be subjected to allegations of plagarism, then we might as well take the allegations to their logical extremes. I would note that John Irving featured a farting dog in the 1981 novel "Hotel New Hampshire," which I guess means all farting dog books since then are simply John Irving ripoffs.

For those reviewers who were shocked, shocked I tell you, that the book's content was, dare I say it, a little crude --- I would simply suggest that you read the book's title a little more diligently. There is no hidden agenda here --- what you see is what you get, and really, it is not nearly as vulgar as it could be. Good grief.

As to the book itself --- it is a fairly entertaining book with amusingly bizarre artwork and some pretty amusing dialogue. An adult with some talent with sound effects could have a great deal of fun entertaining the youngsters, as I did. Books that are as much fun for the adult reader as the youthful listener don't come down the pike every day.

Rating:
Summary: Funny but... it's been done before and better
Review: I have never heard of "Flatulent Fred" (and neither has Amazon); however, Dog Breath!: The Horrible Trouble With Hally Tosis by Dav Pilkey (copywritten in 1994), as another reviewer mentioned, is esentially the same story (only with bad breath as opposed to gas) with a little better sense of writing and a much better sense of visual illustration. In my opinion, the only appealing visual in Walter is Walter himself. The people are freakishly rendered and a visual detraction from the story. Any book that makes children happy is okay by me and Dav Pilkey has created many books that children of all ages enjoy and seems to be doing pretty well on his own.That said I think it is a shame that his book is overlooked for this inferior version.