Do you love dogs? Do you enjoy short, sweet books that will give you the warm fuzzies?
Scholastic books has in paperback a series called The Puppy Place — Where every puppy finds a home by Ellen Miles. Each book features a different dog: Black lab, golden retriever, Jack Russell terrier, German shepherds, and mutts to name a few and how the Peterson family helps these dogs in need.
Last night I read Pugsley about a (yes, you guessed it) PUG! Pugsley goes to doggy day care but he is a very naughty puppy. Who will take Pugsley in when his owners decide to give him up because they can’t handle him? And can fourth-grader Lizzie Peterson turn Pugsley into a dog someone would want in their home? I enjoyed reading this well written chapter book for any age.
Here is a picture of my pug, Cookie, when she was a puppy. She was so tiny, she could lay across the top of my shoulder and rest her head on my neck when we slept at night. She was very sick for awhile when we brought her home and when she couldn’t breathe at night, I would massage her ribs to help her. That was why she laid near my face. Isn’t she the cutest little puglet?
This is another favorite picture of Cookie because it shows her perfectly curled tail. If you touch her tail at all, she will turn her face to it and make sure it stays curled!
Tell me which of The Puppy Place books are your favorites and why?
Next 2k8 member to join the "Plagiarists anonymous" blog-week? Laurel Snyder, author of the new middle-grade fairy tale, Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains OR The Search for a Suitable Princess.
Laurel, what've you got for us? Just how bad is it?
Oh, man-- it's pretty bad.
See, the number one rule of stealing is that you're not supposed to steal from an obvious/famous source, right? You're supposed to steal something nobody will recognize. Or you're supposed to creatively tinker with what you've stolen, for a kind of meta effect.
Well I broke that rule without even realizing it. We were already in the copyediting stage when I started to have this weird feeling, this panicked sensation that one of the lines in my bookn was NOT MY OWN! It jsut felt like I'd seen it somewhere before...
Can you imagine?
The passage in my book was:
“Which way do you think you’re going anyway? North? North is nice, but then, South has its advantages too. And West rhymes with best, so it can’t be too bad. What’s your general direction?”
And although I didn't actually take this passage, word for word, I did totally steal it. From STUART LITTLE no less. Remember this?
"North is nice," said the repairman. I've always enjoyed going north. Of course, south-west is a fine direction too... and there's east. I once had an interesting experience on an easterly course..."
Imagine my horror when I figured it out, after a long night of poking around online, searching for a vague case of plagiarism. Because although I knew I hadn't really written it, I had no clue where I'd gotten it from. It was awful!
So that's it, my big experience as a thief.
Of course, I didn't actually make up the name of the villain from my next book, but I did pay for it, sort of. So that's not stealing, right? Just prostitution...
Yeah, okay, you're right, Laurel. We all agree. You're a total sleazeball, and you *should* be embarassed.
Just kidding. Sort of.
