Pippin is a big, goofy yellow dog with a curly black tail who doesn’t like baths. Her attempts to escape from the tub, galloping off into the forest, mean that her loving owner, Mabel, in pursuit, is the one who ends up in the suds. Finally Pippin’s luck runs out, and on her last dash out the door and off to the woods, she comes across trouble – a skunk – which results in many more baths than the initial one she was so anxious to avoid.

Author K.V. (Krista) Johansen lives in Sackville, New Brunswick, and is the author of Torrie and the Dragon (Roussan) and The Serpent Bride (Thistledown). Pippin Takes a Bath is her first picture book, and a sequel, Pippin and the Bones, is due out in spring 2000. This is the 11th picture book for Toronto illustrator Bernice Lum, creator of the canine character Stanley, in the U.K. series called If I Had a Dog.

There is some good action writing in Pippin, and a happy ending with one more delightful mud puddle roll for the dog and a fondly resigned Mabel. The appealing marker-and-watercolour drawings are done in flat colour within black outlines. While some picture book illustrations have extensive detail and even subplots, these ones are very simple and some kids will be bored with their cartoon-like greeting card look. One unfortunate problem with the book is its typeface: called Smile, it doesn’t work well for text copy, and the letterforms and too-wide spacing make it unpleasantly difficult to read.