Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes by Louis Sachar has nothing to do with dogs. Gary W. Boone, nicknamed Goon, knows he was born to be a stand up comedian, but it’s everyone else who doubts him. Then when Gary’s school puts on a talent show, Gary is sure it’s his big break. Gary then spends all of his time making up jokes, preparing them and putting them into order. While doing all this Gary forgets about his homework and then has to catch up on everything he’s missed, giving him less time to practice for the talent show. These many story twisting moments occur throughout the book forcing Gary to make decisions. This is a very funny, well-written book that I enjoyed reading. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Gary goes and asks his math teacher, who is also the faculty adviser for the talent show, why she gave him four pages of math homework. He states “Four pages is a lot of homework. Other teachers assign homework too. I have to read a book and do a book report by Friday. How am I supposed to work on my act for the talent show if I have to waste all my time doing homework?” The book report was actually assigned three weeks earlier, but Gary forgot all about it. His math teacher basically tells him, maybe you should have started the book report when you were assigned it. I liked this part of the book because it was funny and I could relate to it.Another one of my favorite parts of the book is when Gary is in his room thinking about the talent show and then sees Mrs. Snitzberry who is a made up person Gary makes fun of all the time. Mrs. Snitzberry is getting mad at Gary because she believes he is making the wrong decision by quitting the talent show. She says “You’ve been making fun of me for the last two years. Did I ever complain? No, of course I didn’t complain, because it was humor. Humor, mans greatest gift! That’s what separates humans from other animals. That’s why we call it humor. Humans-humor. You never hear dogs telling jokes, do you? No, thats because dogs have no sense of humor.” Dogs don’t tell jokes. I liked this part of the book because it explains the meaning of the name and it is also what motivates Gary to still perform in the talent show.
It was a nice book with a funny storyline. Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes by Louis Sachar has nothing to do with dogs. Gary W. Boone, nicknamed Goon, knows he was born to a jokester, but it’s everyone else who doubts him. Then when Gary’s school puts on a talent show, Gary is sure it’s his big break. Gary then spends all of his time making up jokes, preparing them and putting them into order. While doing all this Gary forgets about his homework and then has to catch up on everything he’s missed, giving him less time to practice for the talent show. Gary (Goon) faces many problems, and only some come to a resolution. Whenever Gary is talking to someone, he tells a joke, but no one thinks they are funny. But when a talent show is announced at his school, he starts on making his routine everyday to make it perfect. Then his mom and dad said that if he didn't tell a joke until the talent show, he would get 100 dollars. But since he didn't think his jokes were funny, he quit. But an incident caused him to change his mind. I found this really great after a few chapters. But then it got a little repetitive. I would of rated it 3 1/2 stars but thats not possible here. The book was very entertaining up to the middleish-end.This is why i rated it 3 stars.
What do You think about Dogs Don't Tell Jokes (2001)?
Gary Boone (people call him Goon) has a habit of turning everything into a joke. He can never be taken seriously, and people who are near him will never be taken seriously by him. He thinks he has a good talent, of making jokes, so he signs up for the school's talent competition and gears up for his first stand-up comedy show. Egs of his jokes: Do you feel like an egg this morning? I don't know. How does an egg feel? Just call me Humpty Dumpty.Yes. You better not drop me. I might crack. Was expecting the book to be as funny as Wayside School, but I only started bursting in giggles on pg 165: This guy is complaining that he is always lined first because of his name, "Fred Furst".
—Verena
I really liked the book because of it's story. For example The whole thing made you feel differently about the characters throughout the story, at first you were sad for Gary, but then you got happy at the end. At first I thought Joe was a huge jerk, but at the end I though that he was just following along with his friends and alone he was pretty nice and goofy. The story took a real big turn for the better than it got bad again, but then It all turn out okay.
—Natalie Walton
Gary Boone, or Goon as people call him, has a problem. He doesn’t have any friends at his school, he gets teased and bullied, and he hides his low self esteem and insecurity behind a wall of never ending bad jokes. He thinks his humor is the only asset he has and yet it seems it’s what cripples him the most. He knows people don’t like his jokes and he knows it will cause more teasing but he can’t turn off his barrages of verbal diarrhea. But he thinks that by showing off his best jokes at the school talent show, people will realize he’s the gifted genius he always thought he was. That’s the premise of Dogs Don’t Tell Jokes.Sachar throws in a few Wayside School references such as Maurecia’s Ice Cream Parlor and how Gary doesn’t understand Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School and Gary’s references to his teacher’s legs or imagining her in the shower were a little racy! I did like that bit of naughtiness.While it was sometimes cute and while I did enjoy Gary’s standup routine at the end of the book, I didn’t think it was a great Sachar book. Gary is honorable and I appreciate that being a little white kid, he doesn’t tell ethnic jokes and he’s definitely more mature and the bigger person when compared to his bullies but I still didn’t really like Gary. I’m supposed to sympathize with him but I couldn’t. It felt like this kid had some kind of social anxiety disability because he’s totally unable to read social cues. People nowadays might say he’s on the spectrum so maybe he needs an IEP instead of a comedy routine. It was cool to see how he puts together a set and all the thinking that goes into it but it seemed to be one of the main plotlines and I wasn’t all that interested.I learned sometimes students think about their teacher’s legs which is why I never wear skirts to class.
—Jenny
