By Tom Watson
A stray dog and his four friends will do anything to steal a hamburger, told by a narrator who keeps apologizing for his terrible drawings.
Stick Dog lives in a pipe under a highway overpass with four friends: Poo-Poo, Mutt, Karen, and Stripes. One day they catch the smell of hamburgers grilling in the park, and they hatch a plan to get one. Then a worse plan. Then a worse one after that. All the while the narrator keeps breaking in to apologize that he can only draw stick figures, which is exactly why every dog in the book is a stick figure.
A Captain Underpants fan already loves a book that knows it's being silly and talks straight to them, and Stick Dog is built entirely on that joke. The drawings are terrible on purpose, the chapters are short, and a hungry dog with a ridiculous plan is an easy thing to root for. It reads fast and light, so it's the gentlest way to land on real prose, and there's a long series to keep going with.