My 4 year old son and 1 year old daughter absolutely adore this book. The baby hands it to me and starts dancing before I even get the first page turned. It's lots of fun to sing and has become a family staple.

Murphy is a fat yellow lab whose human, Cheryl, purchases a treadmill and forces Murphy to use it. He does, loses weight, attracts a female dog, and becomes famous.
While Ziefert's intentions may be good, i.e. to encourage children to exercise and eat right, the less-than-subtle messages conveyed here are disturbing, to say the least. Is it alright to force someone to exercise, or to threaten them with punishment if they don't? Do we want to perpetuate this society's fascination with and reverence of appearance above all else? How many of us were humiliated by forced exercise or dieting as children, and how do we feel about it now? Did it improve our relationship to food or exercise? Were the results ultimately beneficial?
Though this reaction may seem strong, picture books are read and absorbed by impressionable young children, many of whom are already overly body conscious. We don't need to encourage this kind of coercion.

I just had to respond to the reader who panned this book: do you own a dog? This is a VERY funny book! And well done. Murphy, like many dogs and their humans had gotten into the habit of too many calories and too little exercise. To view the storyline as a case of "society's...reverence of appearance above all else" and to equate Cheryl's conduct with "humilia[ion] by forced exercise or dieting" is a major case of the reader projecting HER issues on Murphy! He's a dog: he lives to eat, sleep AND please his alpha dog, Cheryl. And Cheryl, like any good alpha dog (or parent, for that matter) is using positive discipline and proactive behavior to mold her protege into the best--and healthiest--dog he can be.
My kids love this book! And they don't see the negative messages that the CA reader does; they see a funny story about an owner's creative way to help her dog get healthier.