Let’s welcome Margarita Engle to Best Dog Books, a blog that features interviews with authors who’ve written stories for kids with a key canine character.
WHEN YOU WANDER, A Search and Rescue Dog Story (Holt/Macmillan, April, 2013). It is a picture book for young children, in the form of a single poem that tells a story from the point of view of a wilderness search and rescue dog trained to find lost hikers. It is illustrated by Mary Morgan.
AOB: Who is your key dog character and what kind of dog is he/she? Tell us a little more about him/her.
*The dog is a first person narrator, so he/she isn’t named, but is a very sweet, cute Golden Retriever, dedicated to finding lost people.
AOB: In 70 words or less, provide a succinct plot description of your story.
*The search and rescue dog speaks to a child, explaining what the child should do if he/she gets lost in a forest—stop, stay in one place, and make friends with a tree, because the farther a lost person wanders, the harder it is for search and rescue dogs to follow their scent trail. The poem/story begins with: “I am a graduate of sniffing school! I practice sniffing every day, just in case you ever go out in the woods, and lose your way.”
AOB: What inspired you to write this story?
*My husband is a volunteer search and rescue dog/trainer handler, with two dogs, Maggi and Chance. I hide in forests in the Sierra Nevada mountains and other wild regions, at least once or twice a week, so that SAR dogs and handlers can practice finding a “lost” person. They call me a volunteer “victim.” It has been such a pleasure watching dogs with strong “play drives” transformed into hard-working heroes, because dogs don’t distinguish between play and work. It’s all great fun to them. Search and rescue is basically an extended hide-and-seek game.
AOB: What was the biggest challenge you had writing your story? How did you overcome it?
*I don’t usually find it natural to write in a sweet, cute style, but I felt that the subject of getting lost would be too frightening for young children, unless balanced by comforting images, both in the text and illustrations.
AOB: What other YA/MG books have you written? Do any of them feature a key dog character? If so, which ones? AOB: What are these stories about?
*Most of my books are YA novels in verse about Cuban history. My other picture book is SUMMER BIRDS, the Butterflies of Maria Merian, one of the earliest women scientists.
AOB: What kind of story can we expect next from you? Is it about a dog? If so, what is it about?
*MOUNTAIN DOG is also about search and rescue dogs; it is a middle grade chapter book in verse, scheduled for publication by Holt/Macmillan in August, 2013.
AOB: What else would you like us to know about you or your story?
*The true inspiration for When You Wander came from a search and rescue training day, when I was standing around with my husband, and a bunch of other volunteers and SAR dogs. Three little girls walked into our camp, headed straight for our Yellow Lab, Chance, and spoke to him, instead of to any of the people. All three said, “We don’t know where we are!” Then they burst into tears, and hugged Chance. He comforted them. They had wandered away from a big group camped in a nearby meadow, but by wandering in circles, they got farther and farther away from their own tent. No one at their church camp even realized that they were lost. Everyone thought someone else was watching them. I realized how important it is for children to learn basic wilderness safety, and how much easier it is for them to learn from animals, than from people.
AOB: Can you remember the first book that made an impact on you? And why?
*When I was very little, my favorite picture book was The Ugly Duckling. I loved the unexpected transformation. My Cuban mother was still learning English at that time, so she also recited a lot of Spanish poetry, especially Versos Sencillos (Simple Verses) by José Martí.
They are poems written for adults, but some of them are easy for children to understand. The nature of poetry captivated me. I loved the rhythms and rhymes. It was like music.
Readers can go to Margarita Engle’s web page to find out more information about her and her books. You can also find her on Facebook.
Thank you Margarita for joining us today at Best Dog Books!
Let’s welcome Audrey Vernick, author of Bogart and Vinnie: A Completley Made-Up Story of True Friendship, to Best Dog Books.
AOB: Pub date and publisher? Genre? Targeted age group? Illustrator?
*Bogart and Vinnie: A Completely Made-Up Story of True Friendship, illustrated by Henry Cole. Walker (Bloomsbury), June 18, 2013, ages 4-8.
AOB: Who is your key dog character and what kind of dog is he/she? Tell us a little more about him/her.
*Vinnie is a crazy-happy dog who gets lost and ends up inside a nature preserve, where he encounters Bogart, a rhinoceros. Observers note that the two form a fast, charming, interspecies friendship. Closer observers (readers) may note that the friendship only exists in Vinnie’s friendly, slightly clueless, crazy-happy mind.”
When illustrator Henry Cole was about to begin work on the book, he asked how I pictured Vinnie, how I wanted him to look. But I said that when your illustrator is HENRY COLE, you just sit back and wait for the answer to that question. He may be a tiny bit more cartoony than I envisioned, but I love Vinnie.
AOB: In 70 words or less, provide a succinct plot description of your story.
*Vinnie, a crazy-happy dog, gets lost inside a nature preserve. He loves all the animals he meets there until he sees Bogart the rhinoceros, his new best friend. Everyone is charmed by the interspecies friendship, except Bogart. Word spreads quickly. Bogart and Vinnie become an internet sensation! Can their friendship survive the tolls of fame? Can Bogart survive Vinnie?
AOB: Reviews or blurbs you wish to share:
*”Enthusiastic Vinnie wears his doggy heart on his sleeve…diverting and comical.” –Kirkus
“It’s a witty, big hearted story that makes full use of this duo’s comic talents while poking gentle fun at the human tendency to coo over interspecies friendships (and then turn them into children’s books.)” -Publisher’s Weekly
AOB: What inspired you to write this story?
* I was charmed when I first read Owen and Mzee. And the myriad nonfiction interspecies friendship books that followed in its wake. But at some point I came to question the use of the word friendship when applied to tortoise and hippo, orangutan and dog, elephant and dog, etc. I wanted to write about a perceived friendship in which one party (in this case, Bogart, the rhinoceros) is not at all, not one bit, interested in his so-called best friend.
AOB: What was the biggest challenge you had writing your story? How did you overcome it?
*There were many drafts of this book. At first, my editor thought I didn’t do enough satirizing of the genre, so I created a draft that had nods of the head to Christian the Lion, Owen and Mzee, and Bella and Tarra. Then it was decided it would be better if the book stood alone—as a satisfying read whether or not one is familiar with the books I was satirizing, so those allusions were removed.
Vinnie is everydog, eager to be loved. I wasn’t worried about readers connecting with him. But Bogart is a curmudgeon on his best day. He wants nothing more than to be left alone. I think it would be fair to say that I might not have overcome that, but Henry Cole, the illustrator, did. The facial expressions of Cole’s Bogart would make almost anyone feel for him.
AOB: What other YA/MG books have you written? Do any of them feature a key dog character? If so, which ones? AOB: What are these stories about?
*I’ve written so many dog books but those must be the ones I can’t get right as this is the first to be published. There’s one picture book that’s a couple of revisions from done that I hope will be my ultimate dog picture book.
My first middle-grade novel, Water Balloon, features a dog named Rig (short for Gehrig), based on my dog Rookie. Rig’s owner, Marley, is having the worst summer—with recently separated parents and best friends who are outgrowing her—and I feel like the kindest gift I gave her was this wonderful dog. Rig even leads her to the yard of a neighbor, Jack, who helps salvage the summer.
AOB: What kind of story can we expect next from you? Is it about a dog? If so, what is it about?
*I just finished revision on Screaming at the Ump, a middle-grade novel to be published in April, along with a sibling picture book, Edgar’s Second Word. I have another novel in progress—Army of One—which (at this early stage) is about a girl named Army in the difficult aftermath of the death of her beloved dog, Serendipity.
In 2015, I have two picture books coming out: Unlike Other Monsters and First Grade Dropout. And I have a variety of picture book manuscripts in various degrees of readiness.
AOB: What else would you like us to know about you or your story?
*I love my dogs! Rookie is a twelve year old mini-labradoodle (large for a mini). Hootie is a two-year-old mini goldendoodle. Hootie was a rescue who, unbeknownst to us, came sick as could be with parvovirus. It was a brutal and rocky first two weeks with her hospitalized most of that time, but she’s now our little miracle dog. A miracle dog who barks too much. But I’m working on it.
Everyone in the family has noticed that Rookie and Hootie have a very Bogart-and-Vinnie kind of relationship. Which cracks us up, as I wrote the book before Hootie was even born.
AOB: Can you remember the first book that made an impact on you? And why?
*I remember reading Ursula Nordstrom’s The Secret Language and, amazingly, finding out that my friend Claire, who lived around the block, was reading it at the exact same time. We tried to make our own secret language—we were so in love with that idea—but it didn’t feel as magical in real life as it did in the book.
AOB: Where can readers go to find out more information about you and/or your books?
Let’s welcome Dayna Lorentz today at Best Dog Books, a blog that features interviews with authors who’ve written a story for kids with a key dog character. Dayna has written a book called The Storm, published by April 2012 by Scholastic. It’s an animal fantasy story targeted for kids 9-12.
AOB: Who is your key dog character and what kind of dog is he/she? Tell us a little more about him/her.
*Shep, German shepherd. Shep is an escapee from a dog fighting kennel, a terrifying, lonely place where he had to fight other dogs to survive. He’s rescued from that life and adopted by a boy and his family, who give him a wonderful, safe home. But when a hurricane forces Shep’s family to leave him behind, Shep must recall his hard-won skills from the fight kennel to protect himself and the new friends he meets in the drowned city that remains.
AOB: In 70 words or less, provide a succinct plot description of your story.
* When a hurricane forces his family to evacuate without him, Shep the German shepherd is confused. Where is his boy? Will he ever return? And what will Shep do in the meantime, now that the extra bowls of food — not to mention all those tasty things he found in the big cold box — are gone?
Then another dog shows up at Shep’s window and convinces him to escape. There’s food outside, and a whole empty city to explore. Shep just wants to go home . . . but the adventure of a lifetime is just beginning.
Reviews or blurbs you wish to share:
* “Curl up with your kibble and savor this incredible story of dogs left behind when a hurricane sweeps through their city. This page-turner follows stalwart Shep and intrepid Callie, who despite her ‘yapper’ size is up to her muzzle in courage, as this extraordinary canine duo braves their new environment and forms a new pack. Dayna Lorentz has delivered a book with bite—and with a great heart.” — Kathryn Lasky, author of The Guardians of Ga’Hoole and Wolves of the Beyond
AOB: What inspired you to write this story?
* The true stories of the dogs, cats, and other pets who survived Hurricane Katrina. The characters in the story, however, are inspired by my own dogs, Peter the Pugston (Pug/Boston terrier mix) and Kerry the Jack Puggle Terrier (Pug/Jack Russell terrier mix), and the many other dogs in my life.
AOB: What was the biggest challenge you had writing your story? How did you overcome it?
* The biggest challenge I faced in writing this series was trying to capture how a dog perceives the world. I wanted the world of the story to feel different to readers—more doggy, to be exact. To do this, I focused on three things.
First, I tried to describe everything using a dog’s primary senses: smell and sound, then sight. This is really hard for a sight-dependent human like me! It means talking about what the grass smells like and how it moves in the wind before talking about the fact that it’s green.
Second, I had to think about the human world from a dog’s point of view. This meant figuring out what would most interest a dog in the human world. I guessed smelly things like socks and leftovers. I also had to think about how a dog might describe human things that are totally alien to them, like vacuum cleaners.
Finally, I changed the language I used in the book to reflect how I thought a dog would talk. I made up dog idioms and sayings, and tried to put a doggy spin on my descriptions, such as describing daybreak as “the tails of dawn wagging in the sky.”
AOB: What other YA/MG books have you written? Do any of them feature a key dog character? If so, which ones? AOB: What are these stories about?
* There are three books in the Dogs of the Drowned City series, The Storm, The Pack, and The Return, all of which tell the story of Shep and the other pets as they try to survive a city-killing hurricane and then live in the ruined landscape left in its wake.
I am also the author of the YA trilogy No Safety in Numbers published by Dial Books, which is told from the points of view of four teens who are trapped with thousands of other people when a biological weapon goes off in a mall.
AOB: What kind of story can we expect next from you? Is it about a dog? If so, what is it about?
*I’m not sure what my next project will be! Right now, I’m working on finishing the as-yet-untitled final book in the No Safety in Numbers trilogy.
AOB: What else would you like us to know about you or your story?
* I am a huge dog person. I grew up with lots of dogs—Afghan Hounds and Boxers and Bostons, oh my!—in addition to my two silly pug mutts. But I’ve had tons of other pets, including fish, rabbits, guinea pigs, and a Maine Coon Cat named Oscar, who is the inspiration behind Fuzz in the Dogs of the Drowned City series. On my website, check out the books pages for The Storm, The Pack, and The Return to find out more about the real dogs behind the characters in the books!
AOB: Can you remember the first book that made an impact on you? And why?
* The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. I loved how wild and wacky and silly and smart this book is. One detail in particular that I love is the idea that words have a specific taste. And I loved Tock, the watchdog.
AOB: Where can readers go to find out more information about you and/or your books?
* My website! I have lots of extra information about the world of Dogs of the Drowned City and about me, including all the dogs I’ve had the pleasure of sharing my life with. There are also teaching resources and information on how to invite me to your school or library!
Thank you Dayna for sharing a bit about yourself and The Storm with us at best Dog Books!
Let’s welcome Ginger Wadsworth today at Best Dog Books, a blog that features interviews with authors who have written a story for kids with a key canine character. Ginger Wadsworth will share the story behind Yosemite’s Songster: One Coyote’s Story illustrated by Daniel San Souci. Targeted for kids 4-1o in age. Ginger’s book will be released in August 2013 by Yosemite Conservancy.
AOB: Who is your key dog character and what kind of dog is he/she? Tell us a little more about him/her.
* Coyote. It’s a female coyote that lives in Yosemite National Park and in the story she is separated from her mate.
AOB: In 70 words or less, provide a succinct plot description of your story.
* A sudden rockslide in Yosemite Valley separates Coyote from her mate. Readers journey throughout the Valley observing its many famous landmarks on four paws with Coyote. You’ll explore both the natural world and the human world with one’s nose leading the way.
Starred reviews or blurbs:
* It was released in March 2013 exclusively in Yosemite National Park and on the Yosemite Conservancy website. It will be available everywhere in August 2013, and it has not been reviewed yet since the book is only a few “weeks” old.
AOB: What inspired you to write this story?
* I welcomed the opportunity to write about Yosemite National Park once again. I had published a biography of naturalist John Muir and also a picture book entitled CAMPING WITH THE PRESIDENT about an actual 1903 Yosemite camping trip with President Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir. I’d always wanted to work with illustrator Dan San Souci. Dan and I had discussed the possibility of jointly doing a book about one of the most amazing and fascinating animals in the park and it has now come to life.
AOB: What was the biggest challenge you had writing your story? How did you overcome it?
* The manuscript was reviewed for accuracy by National Park Service staff at Yosemite National Park. I had to be willing to make changes to reflect that philosophy the Park Service wants to portray. It wasn’t a challenge necessarily, but it was important to do it correctly. I could not anthropomorphize the coyote in anyway for example, and I had to be scientifically on target. Coyotes are natural scavengers, and in the park they do eat human food, but the park discourages that, which is great. One of the official messages for the millions of visitors to the park is that coyotes, bears, and all the other wild animals should find and eat their natural food.
AOB: What other YA/MG books have you written? Do any of them feature a key dog character? If so, which ones? AOB: What are these stories about?
* I’ve published over 25 books for children. None have featured a main dog character until YOSEMITE’S SONGSTER. However, my last biography, FIRST GIRL SCOUT: THE LIFE OF JULIETTE GORDON LOW published by Clarion Books, was about the founder of Girl Scouts in the USA and Daisy Low, as she was known, loved dogs and always traveled around the world with them. I included many archival photographs of Daisy with her dogs and birds.
AOB: What kind of story can we expect next from you? Is it about a dog? If so, what is it about?
* Actually, I have a forthcoming nonfiction book about scat detection dogs that will be published by Charlesbridge Publishing. It’s titled SUPER SNIFFERS: SCAT DETECTION DOGS AT WORK and will be about how dogs are used by wildlife biologists studying endangered or invasive species. It will be out in 2014 or 2015.
AOB: What else would you like us to know about you or your story?
* I have two golden retrievers, Willa and Scout, that are trained therapy dogs. I take them into libraries and schools where elementary age children read to the dogs as part of a national program called R.E.A.D., or our local name, Paws to Read.
AOB: Can you remember the first book that made an impact on you? And why?
I always mention CHARLOTTE’S WEB by E.B. White. I love that story, and I guess I’m a want-to-be farmer who would love to have lots of animals. I only have chickens and dogs right now. CHARLOTTE’S WEB is such a great story. During school visits, I often read the dramatic, opening paragraph in the book as an example of how to pull in your readers.
Not long ago, Charlesbridge Publishing released my picture book, UP, UP, AND AWAY about a ballooning spider. It was inspired by and is dedicated to Charlotte from E.B. White’s book.
Thank you for joining us today at Best Dog Books, Ginger Wadsworth. We’d love to feature your Super Sniffer book when it comes out, as well as any others you write with a key canine character. For more information about Ginger Wadsworth and her books, please click HERE.
Let’s welcome Polly Carlson-Voiles to Best Dog Books, a blog that features interviews with authors who have written a book for kids with a key canine character. Polly Carlson-Voiles will share the story behind her novel, Summer of the Wolves which is realistic fiction for kids aged 10-14 and published by Houghton Mifflin.
AOB: Who is your key dog character and what kind of dog is he/she? Tell us a little more about him/her.
My key canine character is a black wolf pup named Khan. His mother has been shot by a man stealing wild pups to sell illegally. Nika helps raise him and socialize him from 11 days old until the time comes to make a decision about his future. As a young pup, Khan is emotional and attached to Nika as a member of his human pack. There is a secondary wolf storyline about Luna, a captive adult female wolf who has escaped in a storm. Nika and her friend Thomas discover Luna hiding on an island. Part of the resolution of this story is the possibility these two wolves offer each other.
AOB: In 70 words or less, provide a succinct plot description of your story.
* Nika, age 12 1/2, has come with her brother to northern Minnesota from California, having lost her family. With her uncle, a wildlife biologist studying wolves, she finds Khan, an 11 day old wolf Pup. Nika opens her bruised heart to this pup. Can she open her heart to accept the love of a new family? Can she accept that Khan might need a pack of his own?
Starred reviews or blurbs you wish to share:
SUMMER OF THE WOLVES [STARRED REVIEW!]
Author: Carlson-Voiles, Polly
KIRKUS Review Issue Date: March 1, 2012
Can the wildness of wolves transform the heart of a girl who has suffered too many losses? Twelve-year-old Nika and her younger brother Randall,recently orphaned, live in California, finally content with their-best-foster-mother-yet, Meg. When Meg’s health deteriorates, however, a well-meaning social worker locates their long-lost uncle Ian—a globe-trotting wildlife biologist now studying wolves in rural Minnesota—ostensibly fora “visit.” How will Nika incorporate yet another change of venue into her life? For starters, Nika nurtures a motherless wolf pup, fiercely advocates for caged wild animals and makes friends with a like-minded boy named Thomas.But when faced with stark moments of truth, both wild and domestic, will she make the right choices? Through close third-person narration, debut novelist Carlson-Voiles renders Nika’s emotional turmoil and moral dilemmas with gentle, compassionate strokes. Even the least wilderness-savvy readers will be drawn into the breathtaking landscapes, the human-to-animal relationships and the gradual evolution of Nika’s new family. While evoking the girl-wolf-hunter triad of Jean Craighead George’s 1973 Newbery Award–winning classic, Julie of the Wolves, the author brings enough of her own experiences with animals and troubled young people into the story that it feels like nonfiction.
A little gem of a book for all wild-hearted lovers of the natural world. (Fiction. 10-14)
“This book is a great read and will appeal to both boys and girls. Readers will learn much about wolves and wildlife conservation in a non-preachy manner. This is one of those books you won’t be able to put down.” ~ LIBRARY MEDIA CONNECTION
“The story is about wild wolves, and the information in it is fascinating. But the story is much more. It’s a story about relationships. Relationships between people, relationships between animals, and relationships between animals and people.” ~ Examiner.com Review Sept. 2012
“Nika’s losses and anxieties—the deeply felt instability of her life, her lack of control over her own future, her feelings of having no true place in the world—neatly parallel the wolves’ situation, but Carson-Voiles never pushes the simile too hard, letting both stories unfold naturally in tandem. The wealth of information about wolf development and the rescue and care of wild creatures will appeal to budding naturalists, while the vivid, kid-accessible descriptions (“Nika hated people talking about what had happened to her family. It made her feel like a run-over animal lying in the street, everyone standing over her, looking down and discussing the nature of her injuries”) pack a strong emotional punch. Nika’s tenuous bonds to the wolves and to Ian are compassionately drawn, and readers will be aching for Nika to find her place to call home”
Bulletin for the enter of Children’s Books, July/August 2012
Summer of the Wolves is filled with everything a reader would want. It is a great story, with awesome characters and a concept and words that bring the story to life. It is a book that deserves five out of five stars. Summer of the Wolves gives information about wolves, but not enough to bore someone like a non-fiction book might. Carlson-Voiles wrote an interesting book for kids in middle school. It tells a life story of foster kids and the story of a pup and how it lives its life. I don’t very often read books, but I’m glad I read this book. It kept me going on my vacation whenever I was bored, and it gave me something to do that was very fun. Summer of the Wolves is one of my favorite books, and I will read it when I have nothing to read. I could never set this book down and would read five chapters at a time. It’ll keep you reading and you will never find a boring part in the story.
I began to research wolves when we had a part-wolf dog that had to be put to sleep. I collected data as a volunteer in a study of captive wolves and fell in love watching the social interaction of a wolf pack. I combined this interest with my love for northern wilderness, begun when I was a child on an island exactly like the one in the story, and with my experience with “lost and found” children in my work as a special educator.
AOB: What was the biggest challenge you had writing your story? How did you overcome it?
It took a long time! I wrote summers when I was teaching and only finished the book after I retired. Capturing the issues I wanted to share within a sturdy plot was the most difficult writing task. I finally charted the whole story out moving 3×5 cards around on butcher paper where I could see it visually.
AOB: What other YA/MG books have you written? Do any of them feature a key dog character? If so, which ones?
I have written and submitted a prehistory series of chapter books for ages 7-10. Every one of these stories has an important dog! Song is the name of my “first dog” character, and Flint is her pup who is in the 2nd book of the series.
AOB: What are these stories about?
The first book is about how dog came from wolf many thousands of years ago and a girl who helped this happen. The 2nd is about cave painting and shows dog as rescuer and companion.(Flint is in this one.) The 3rd is about early music, and yes, an important ancient dog with a new role, guide dog!
AOB: What kind of story can we expect next from you? Is it about a dog? If so, what is it about?
I am working on a sequel of Summer of the Wolves that will still have captive and wild wolves, but will introduce a new rescue dog as well as new human characters. In this book my character Nika learns to navigate peer relationships, scape-goating, and the divisiveness that occurs when people judge too quickly.
AOB: What else would you like us to know about you or your story?
The wild wolf on the cover lives on my road.
Twice I was a wolf-pup nanny for the International Wolf Center in Ely. Five of their wolves once napped in my lap or ate from my hand.
I also volunteered as a data collector for a scientific study of captive wolves during their mating season.
I also like to write non-fiction for kids, poetry for myself, to do art, and to write picture book stories. I wrote and illustrated a non-fiction picture book SOMEONE WALKS BY; The Wonders of Winter Wildlife, published in 2008, about animals in winter and some of the amazing facts about their adaptations for survival.
I also love to garden, canoe, walk with my husband and dogs, listen to music and read, read, read.
My biggest thrill as a writer is to see my books in libraries and schools.
AOB: Can you remember the first book that made an impact on you? And why?
As a child I loved any book with animals in it! The classics like The Jungle books, Wind in The Willows, Old Yeller, Sounder, Where the Red Fern Grows, and a very old one called A Dog of Flanders.. To choose one book is too hard!!!
AOB: Where can readers go to find out more information about you and/or your books?
My website is still in process. I hope to have more information there before long. I do post on Facebook, an author page, a book page for Summer of the Wolves, and one for SOMEONE WALKS BY; the Wonders of Winter Wildlife.
Thank you so much for joining us at Best Dog Books, Polly Carlson-Voiles! So glad to see you volunteer at the International Wolf Center in Ely. A portion of the proceeds for my novel, Lara’s Gift will go to this organization for their conservation work. They were very helpful to me in my research on wolves.
Let’s welcome Margarita Engle to Best Dog Books, a blog that features interviews with authors who’ve written stories for kids with a key canine character.
AOB: What other YA/MG books have you written? Do any of them feature a key dog character? If so, which ones? AOB: What are these stories about?
They are poems written for adults, but some of them are easy for children to understand. The nature of poetry captivated me. I loved the rhythms and rhymes. It was like music.
