Dog Man A Tale of Two Kitties

by Dav Pilkey

In Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties, Petey’s attempt to clone himself produces Li’l Petey, a curious kitten whose kindness challenges Petey’s villainous outlook. Meanwhile, Dog Man faces danger involving the revived fish Flippy, and the book combines fast-moving superhero action, visual jokes, and an unexpectedly tender story about friendship and caring for others.

Big Idea

Kindness can challenge the idea that someone must remain a villain forever. Readers can also learn how a graphic novelist uses pictures, dialogue, and panel arrangement to speed up action or slow down an emotional moment.

Discussion Questions

1.Petey expects his clone to be like him. How does Li’l Petey challenge that expectation, and what does this suggest about how people develop their identities?
2.How do Dog Man, Petey, and Li’l Petey show—or struggle to show—care for others? Which actions help you understand their relationships?
3.How does Pilkey make danger funny without removing all the excitement? Choose a scene and explain how its words and pictures work together.
4.Where did you read quickly, and where did you stop to study a picture or think about a character? What choices by the author affected your reading speed?
5.How does Li’l Petey’s friendship with the robot 80-HD expand the book’s ideas about companionship? What makes someone a good friend?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 Copies of the book or teacher-selected pages, paper or six-panel comic templates, pencils, erasers, crayons or markers, sticky notes, and a board or document camera.

Learning Goals

Explain how Li’l Petey’s actions develop the theme of kindness using evidence from words and illustrations.
Identify at least two graphic-novel techniques that influence pacing, such as panel size, repeated images, or dialogue length.
Create a comic with a clear problem, a sequence of events, and a resolution.
Revise one panel to make an action sequence faster or an emotional moment slower.
Discuss creative choices respectfully and connect those choices to their effects on readers.

Activity Steps

1.Read or revisit a short Petey–Li’l Petey exchange and a contrasting action sequence involving Dog Man. Ask students to point out evidence of character feelings and reading speed.
2.Model a three-panel sequence twice: first as quick action with short captions, then as a slower moment with a close-up and a silent reaction. Explain that more panels can sometimes slow time by dividing one moment into smaller beats.
3.Have students plan a new, clearly labeled imagined episode: Petey encounters a small problem, action escalates, and Li’l Petey suggests or demonstrates a kind response.
4.Students draft six panels: establish the problem, build two quick action beats, pause for a reaction, show a kind choice, and resolve the problem. Encourage brief speech bubbles and readable artwork rather than polished drawing.
5.Partners read each comic and mark one place that feels fast and one that feels slow. Creators revise a panel, bubble, or layout based on that feedback.
6.Share selected comics and complete an exit statement: 'I changed the pace by ___ so readers would ___.' Connect the kind resolution to Li’l Petey’s influence in the book.

Standards Connections

CCSS ELA RL.3.3: Describe characters and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.
CCSS ELA RL.3.7: Explain how illustrations contribute to aspects of a story, including character, setting, and mood.
CCSS ELA W.3.3: Write narratives using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
CCSS ELA SL.3.1: Engage effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas.
SEL: Relationship skills and social awareness—recognize feelings, consider different perspectives, and practice caring responses.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties makes writing craft visible. Pilkey’s graphic-novel form lets students see how short speech bubbles, exaggerated movement, sound effects, and panel sequences shape the experience of time. Dog Man’s action scenes invite quick reading, while exchanges between Petey and Li’l Petey invite readers to notice questions, reactions, and changing feelings. The playful framing by George and Harold also presents storytelling as something children can make, experiment with, and enjoy. In a Pace-Write-Read study, students first notice how a selected sequence controls their attention, then write and draw a short experiment, and finally read it aloud or share it with a partner. Emphasize that pacing is not simply 'fast is exciting' and 'slow is boring': a pause can make a joke land or reveal why a character matters. By pairing the book’s energetic adventures with Li’l Petey’s compassionate outlook, students practice using speed and stillness to serve both plot and meaning.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Contrast a Dog Man action sequence with a Petey–Li’l Petey conversation. Ask how the amount of text, number of action beats, and time spent on reactions change the reader’s speed.
Plot	Map Petey’s cloning plan, the arrival of Li’l Petey, and the consequences of the kitten’s unexpected personality. Then track how this storyline connects with the book’s superhero trouble involving Flippy.
Prosody	Read Petey’s frustrated speech and Li’l Petey’s curious questions aloud with contrasting expression. Discuss how stress, pauses, and tone reveal their relationship without adding new words.
Word	Examine short words in speech bubbles and prominent sound effects during action. Have students test how a brief exclamation and a longer explanation produce different reading speeds.
Concept	Use Petey’s cloning scheme to distinguish a story concept from its message: copying a villain creates the situation, but Li’l Petey’s kindness complicates its meaning. Students invent a similarly surprising 'what if' premise.
Voice & Worldview	Compare Petey’s cynical expectations with Li’l Petey’s trusting, compassionate responses. Notice how the book’s playful storytelling allows a serious idea—that kindness matters—to emerge through comedy.
Point of View	Discuss the difference between the George-and-Harold creator framing and the characters inside their comic. Rewrite a short encounter from Petey’s perspective and then Li’l Petey’s, noting what each notices.
Setting & Place	Study how a few visual cues establish places such as Petey’s laboratory or Dog Man’s police world. Ask which setting details are necessary to understand the action immediately.
Original Characters	Identify how Dog Man’s dog-and-human combination, Li’l Petey’s kitten innocence, and 80-HD’s robot form create distinctive story possibilities. Students design an original character whose traits could generate both a problem and a solution.
Dialogue	Examine how Li’l Petey’s questions and Petey’s replies build conflict and humor. Invite students to write an exchange in which the speakers’ different personalities are clear without dialogue tags.
Details	Look closely at facial expressions, body positions, and small background details in a selected scene. Identify a detail that reveals information the speech bubbles do not state.
Descriptions	Show how illustrations perform much of the descriptive work in this graphic novel. Students describe one panel in prose, then decide which words become unnecessary when the image is present.
Firsts	Revisit Li’l Petey’s arrival and consider how his introduction changes readers’ expectations of Petey’s plan. Have students introduce a new character through one revealing action rather than a list of traits.
Immediacy & Engagement	Notice how visible movement, expressive faces, and brief dialogue place readers directly inside Dog Man’s adventures. Students begin their own comic with something happening rather than a long explanation.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Compare a fully pictured exchange with narration that moves readers between events. Discuss why Petey and Li’l Petey’s important interactions deserve scene space rather than only a summary.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Petey’s expectation of an obedient duplicate creates surprise when Li’l Petey behaves differently, while Flippy’s threat supplies danger. Ask students to distinguish wondering what will happen from being startled by what happens.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Look for places where information about earlier events helps explain the current trouble and where a sequence ends before an outcome is known. If a selected passage contains no flash-forward, use that absence to distinguish an actual time jump from a reader’s prediction.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Pause before turning a page in a suspenseful or comic sequence and ask students to predict the reveal. Examine how a chapter ending or page boundary delays information and encourages continued reading.
Pace & Creativity	Use a moment involving Petey and Li’l Petey as material for two original layouts: one compressed and one expanded. Compare how creative choices change the impact without changing the basic event.
Play	The George-and-Harold framing, exaggerated adventures, and Flip-O-Rama invite readers to treat books as playful creations. Encourage students to experiment with a visual joke or surprising panel rather than aiming for perfect realism.
Performance	Assign roles for a short Petey–Li’l Petey exchange and let a third reader perform sound effects or describe silent actions. Discuss which pauses help the audience understand the joke or feeling.
Personality	Track how Petey’s impatience, Li’l Petey’s warmth, and Dog Man’s canine behavior shape their responses to problems. Ask students to make personality visible through a choice, gesture, or line of speech.
Humor	Analyze the mismatch between Petey’s grand cloning ambitions and the kitten he actually gets. Identify how expectation, reaction, and timing combine to make that mismatch funny.
Pause	Find a reaction image or brief conversational beat that holds attention on Petey or Li’l Petey. Try inserting a wordless reaction panel into a student comic to let a feeling or joke register.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Treat action sounds as examples of onomatopoeia and listen for repeated sounds in expressive language. Explain that a graphic novel need not contain formal poems to use sound play and heightened language.
Repetition	Notice recurring questions, reactions, or visual patterns in Petey and Li’l Petey’s interactions. Discuss how repetition establishes an expectation that a later change can disrupt.
Rhythm	Read a short sequence as a pattern of speech, action, and reaction. Have students tap once per panel and discuss why equal-sized panels can still take different amounts of reading time.
Punctuation	Examine question marks in Li’l Petey’s inquiries and exclamation marks in excited or frustrated speech. Read a bubble with altered punctuation to hear how its tone and pace change.
Questions	Li’l Petey’s questioning challenges Petey’s assumptions and keeps their conversations moving. Students write a question that forces a character to explain a belief rather than merely provide a fact.
Compare-Contrast	Compare Petey and Li’l Petey: their similar appearance does not guarantee similar values. Use paired panels or a chart to connect this contrast to the theme of choosing how to act.
Objects	Examine Petey’s cloning equipment as an object that launches the plot. Students choose an ordinary object for their own comic and explain how its use could reveal a character’s intentions.
Threes	Experiment with a three-beat pattern using Petey’s expectation, Li’l Petey’s unexpected response, and Petey’s reaction. Present this as a useful adaptation exercise, not a claim that every joke in the book follows a rule of three.
Lists	Students list the separate action beats in a Dog Man sequence before drawing a new version. Compare this planning list with the finished panels to see how ordering information shapes anticipation.
White Space & Negative Space	Study the gutters between panels and the open space around characters or speech bubbles. Ask how a less crowded reaction panel can direct attention toward Petey’s or Li’l Petey’s expression.
Art & Graphics	Analyze Pilkey’s bold outlines, expressive cartoon faces, and exaggerated movement. Have students explain how an image communicates action or emotion that would otherwise require several sentences.
Interactives & Gamification	Use the book’s Flip-O-Rama pages to explore how reader-controlled movement creates an animated effect. Students make a simple two-image flip sequence and compare its physical pace with ordinary panel reading.
Placement	Trace the intended reading path through panels and speech bubbles in a Petey–Li’l Petey scene. Students revise bubble placement so the setup is read before the reply or punch line.
Form	Discuss how the comic-within-a-book framing, chapters, speech bubbles, and interactive features work together. Compare one short scene with a prose retelling to identify what the graphic-novel form makes possible.
Dummy	Define a dummy as a rough planning booklet, not a finished book. Students fold scrap paper into a miniature comic and plan a Dog Man-inspired action beat, a page-turn reveal, and a quiet kindness moment.
Passion	Discuss how the book’s delight in superheroes, jokes, drawing, and friendship gives it energy. Students choose the part they most care about—action, comedy, or compassion—and make that enthusiasm visible in an original comic.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: 'Petey’s Plan, Li’l Petey’s Pause.' Materials: the book, paper, pencils, and an optional four-panel template. Minutes 0–3: Revisit a brief Petey–Li’l Petey exchange; notice how the kitten’s response disrupts Petey’s expectations. Minutes 3–5: Model four beats for an invented episode, not an event claimed to occur in the book: Petey announces a selfish plan, something goes comically wrong, Li’l Petey notices someone needs help, and Petey reacts to the kitten’s kind choice. Minutes 5–12: Students draw and write their four-panel version, using two quick opening panels, one quiet reaction or observation panel, and a final resolution. Include one brief question from Li’l Petey and show at least one feeling through an expression rather than an explanation. Minutes 12–16: Partners read the comics, pausing wherever the layout invites them to; they identify the fastest and slowest moments. Minutes 16–19: Students revise one feature—dialogue length, panel size, a sound effect, or a silent beat—to clarify the intended pace. Minutes 19–20: Share an exit sentence: 'My pause helps readers notice ___.'

Classroom Activities

One Kitten, Two Speeds

Students create an original six-panel comic featuring Li’l Petey, Petey, and an optional appearance by Dog Man or 80-HD. A small problem begins with quick, funny action, then slows when Li’l Petey responds with kindness. Students use panel size, short dialogue, and a quiet reaction panel to make readers experience both speeds. Designed for approximately grades 2–4, with drawing, dictation, and partner-writing options.

One Kitten, Two Speeds

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