B.A.D.: They're Everywhere . . .

Today is the full moon that conjures the wolf baying at the same and what's a wolf but the ancestor of the dog?  And what's a dog but a motivating force for reluctant readers or a book's narrator or . . . books and dogs, they're everywhere . . . Doug's best friend, as this story in my local, online paper relates:  "Dogs unleash . . . " 


This local SCPA isn't the only organization to have employed dogs in literacy efforts, but it is the first to have demonstrable results in improving reading progress at the end of a three-year study.  Give those dogs a treat!


And speaking of B.A.D.s, while at an author reading last week, I was perusing the recent-paperback releases table and came across this gem:

Stella, referring to her human guardian

The title alone had the book in my hands within nano seconds and then there is the praise from various authors and publications ramping up my reading anticipation level to off the charts:

~"In this age of extended adolescence, here's a coming-of-age novel about a middle-aged man who's had no luck at much of anything, especially love.  The fact that Pete Nelson can tell such a story without making the narrator's charming talking do seem unusual is proof of his power as a writer.  This book will make you laugh, cry, and want a dog you can really talk to."

-Wyn Cooper, poet and author of Postcards from the Interior

~"'I thought you were dead,' Stella says to Paul when he returns home from a bar, on page one of Pete Nelson's new novel. Delivered by an aging, arthritic Labrador/Shepherd mix, the line displays the dry wit and dog logic that makes Stella and, by extension, much of this novel a delight . . . Yes, Stella talks.  And the conversations are so charming and matter-of-fact that it hardly seems worth asking from whence this special power comes."

-Bark magazine

Readers of some earlier posts will know that this isn't the first entry to deal with dog-narrated books.  Chet (the dog) and Bernie, in Spencer Quinn's series, solve mysteries with Chet deducing and cleverly nosing his human companion to "see" what he sees or more accurately, smell what he smells. And then there's Garth Stein's breakout novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain, now in its umpteenth printing and recently adapted for young readers with a different title, My Life as a Dog: Racing in the Rain. 

So what compels these authors to bring these stories to life with dog as narrator? Perhaps they've discovered, like many a reluctant reader, that dogs don't judge, criticize or correct you, but as Doug and his teacher discovered, dogs, "[just] walk up to you and sit in your lap" and "you are the most exciting person in the world and everything you do will be the perfect thing."

Arf!