Cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (Grass; The Waiting) wanted Dog Days to serve "as a record of an era" and pose "questions about the relationships between humans and dogs" following the passage of South Korea's legal ban on the dog-meat industry in January 2024. In black-and-white illustrations, the narrator, Yuna, evolves from a skeptic who reluctantly agrees to her partner's desire to bring a puppy home to a dog lover who rambles through the Korean countryside on long walks with not one but three pups. Each chapter revolves around a dog or memory, including the characters' own beloved pets, Carrot and Potato, and the various dogs around their community who either roam free or are chained up and otherwise uncared for, such as Blackie, Elvis, and Choco, the latter of whom they eventually adopt. Gendry-Kim's characters wrestle with a challenge all too familiar to devoted pet owners: weighing the desire to save every dog who needs help against the precarious and demanding ecosystem of a home already filled with furry friends.
The vignettes of country life are as heartwarming as they are unsettling, contrasting a local history of dog harm with the universal human experience of beauty and worry that come with caring for a dog. Gendry-Kim's limited color palette is incredibly effective; her illustrations are textured and emotional, particularly when capturing the nuances of canine facial expressions. Dog Days is an affecting portrayal of not only how dogs change the lives of the humans they interact with but also how people can cause a ripple effect in their environment through consistent compassion for their hounds. --Kristen Coates, editor and freelance reviewer