I often saw children poring over Dog Man books when I was teaching at a primary school but was never interested to read them.

Yesterday, at the book exchange corner, something just clicked, which led me to Google “Does Dav Pilkey have dyslexia?”

Turns out that he has comorbidity - ADHD and dyslexia.

Well, that settles it. I took “Dog Man Unleashed” home.

This isn’t a book for the faint-hearted. I gotta admit that it ruffled my delicate English sensibilities.

Rampant capitalisation, missing or wrong use of articles, spelling of ‘because’ as ‘cuz’, and even a made-up word ‘impostoring’.

If children are raised on a diet of Dog Man books, they will think that such lapses in the English language are the standard. Because they wouldn’t know any different. What does it mean for the hardworking teachers who fight a losing battle, yet insist on the correct use of capitalisation and punctuation in their classrooms?

On the other hand, I’m glad that Dav Pilkey made his vivid worlds and quirky characters come alive on paper.

Just this week, an ADHD + dyslexic boy told me, “I wish I were normal.” I immediately responded, “Of course you are normal. What do you mean?” I was sweeping under the rug, but give me some grace, it was lunch time; we were at the canteen; and I was preoccupied with talking to other students. So, I felt that this book came to my life at the right timing. I will use it to tell that boy that Dan Pilkey is able to make his graphic novels stand out precisely because of his comorbidity. I will get him to try the Flip-o-rama - which is just a fancy name for flipping two pages so that the pictures turn out to be like an animated cartoon - and realise that normal is just a label. Creating our idiosyncratic value and showcasing it to the world should be the thing that consumes our soul.