Robert McCarty's Blog, page 12

April Magic of Words, Books, Kids and Dogs

 

    

 

Therapy reading dogs are helping millions of kids to loose their fear of reading and opening the door to a world of imagination and learning

We believe that dogs can also teach kids about unconditional love...

Kids can learn about courage and loyalty from dogs. 

Dogs have healing qualities that reach people of all ages.

These incredible abilities of dogs are the foundation for the Planet Of The Dogs Series 

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Aesop and the magic of words...

The magic of words for children has been part of children's lives since Aesop, over 2,500 years ago. 

"Ever  since there were children, there has been children's literature. Long before John Newbury established a first press devoted to children's books, stories were told and written for the young, and books originally offered to mature readers were carefully recast or excerpted for the young, and books originally offered to mature readers were carefully recast or excerpted for youthful audiences. Greek and Roman educational traditions grounded themselves in reading and reciting poetry and drama. Aesop's fables lived for two millennia on classroom and family shelves..." -excerpted from Seth Lerer's book, Children's Literature, A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter.

600 Fables and the Creative Tradition

Laura Gibbs, author, blogger and scholar, has translated 600 of Aesop's Fables into English.  The first translation from ancient Greek to English was published by Caxton in 1484. This excerpt is from Gibbs' blog... 

" As folklore, Aesop’s fables are always shifting and changing in their various retellings, and the images used to illustrate the fables, just as much as the words, are part of that creative tradition. The images are not simply extras added on to the story. Instead, these images can contribute their own distinctive elements to that endless mix-and-match process by which new versions of the fables are created — a process which has kept the Aesop’s fable tradition going strong for three thousands years, and counting."

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It seems remarkable to me that probably everyone visiting this blog has read or heard, at some time in their life, Aesops fables.

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Refresh Your Fable Memory....

The website, Aesopica, offers Laura Gibbs' translations of 600 of Aesop's Fables in English...plus Aesop in Latin and Greek. Aesop lives on. 

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"No act of kindnessss, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” 

―from the Lion and the Mouse, Aesop
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Aesop and ASAP...a pun/smile posted by Pigeon Weather Productions

"This reminds me of a short-lived series I did some time ago called ASAP’s Fables: A dog was wandering in the woods when he came across a bear. The dog said to himself, I’d better get out of here ASAP!"

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Paws For People

Paws for people is dedicated to helping people in need. These excerpts from their website can only outline the wonderful work they do. 

"PAWS for People is a nonprofit 501(c)3 pet therapy organization that recruits, trains, certifies, and places therapy teams in over 150 sites in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey... 

Whether it be helping a child with autism learn new social skills, aiding an injured youngster with physical therapy, comforting a hospice patient, distracting a child during chemotherapy treatment, assisting a struggling reader, or being a familiar reminder to an Alzheimer’s patient, a visit from a PAWS’ therapy team makes a difference."

The therapy team in this photo is one of over 350...Paws for People was founded in 2005 by Lynne Robinson after 23 years as a public school teacher.

 To see a first hand video example of this program at work, let Jen Delgado, librarian at Mote Elementary school in Wilmington, DE, show you the Paws for People Program bringing the joy of reading to fourth and fifth graders. Here is the link: Paws for Reading

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The Treasure Trove Continues

Big Box Office Bucks are expected in May from new movies with versions inspired by classic children's literature. and sucessful YA books. Meanwhile, the movie versions of Divergent, Mr Peabody and Frozen -- the reimagined version of Hans Chrisitian Anderson's The Snow Queen --  continue their International popularity.

Combined, they have grossed over one and a half billion dollars.

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Coming in May...

 

OZ revisited on May 9

Sony is releasing an animated version of a return to OZ entitled:

Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return.

The film is based on the book Dorothy of Oz by Roger Stanton Baum, great grandson of L. Frank Baum, the author of the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz book.

Here' link to the trailer: Dorothy's Return  

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 Darkness in the Magic Kingdom

Maleficent opens May 30...This version of Sleeping Beauty is unlike the sweetness and light Disney movies that prevailed for many years...there is a darkside in this film from the Magic Kingdom...not unlike the darkside that prevailed in the earliest versions of the story.

Before the Brothers Grimm rewrote the tale as written in the 17th century by Basile and Perrault, it included the story of the Prince's cannibalistic mother and her suicide leap into a vat filled with reptiles and snakes. I doubt if Disney will go that far, but the trailer is dark, forboding, and has very engaging graphics...more wonders of computer graphics.

If you follow this link to the trailer, you will see for yourself: Maleficent.

The illustration above of Sleeping Beauty and her Prince is by Henry Meynell Rheam.

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No Magic Words for this Snow White

Angelin Preljocaj has created a modern dance-ballet based on the fairy tale of Snow White. Here are excerpts from Gia Kourlas' review, Trying to Outrun Age, in Spiky Heels, in the New York Times...

"A staggering lassitude defines this production of nearly two hours, presented by the Joyce Theater Foundation. Created in 2008, “Snow White” features a Prince (Sergio Diaz), but Mr. Preljocaj’s (pronounced prel-zho-KAHJ) sinister tale has less to do with true love than jealousy, or what the French choreographer has termed the Snow White complex: women who refuse to look their age...

 

Snow White, it turns out, is not as pure as the driven snow, as a seduction scene with the Prince proves. (In case you’re confused, she knew him long before taking a bite of the poisonous apple.) Her stepmother, the Queen (Anna Tatarova), appears as a dominatrix in thigh highs and spiky heels; it’s the Halloween parade, not couture..."

This link will take you to a ten minute excerpt of the dance wherein the prince awakens Snow White from her sleep: Snow White

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 The Planet Of The Dogs series is going to China 

               

 

 The revised publicatrion schedule by the Beijing Chongxianguan Book Company for the Chinese versions of The Planet Of The Dogs Series is for the latter part of May. The illustrations have been redone for the Chinese market. Our thanks to Deanna Leah of HBG who represents the foreign rights for our books. She introduced our books to, and contracted with, our Chinese publishers. 

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The Magic of Words...Phillip Pullman

I adored Superman,” Pullman tells us, and, as a boy, he was “intoxicated,” “enthralled” and “dizzy with passion” while reading his graphic adventures. Then came Batman and the beginning of  the storytelling instinct. The young Pullman did not want to be Batman, but, rather, write about him. Years later, he read Milton and became aware, like other synesthetes, that words had “weight and colour and taste and shape as well as meaning.” That was when he began to play with words, like “a little child putting coloured marbles into patterns. - Maria Tatar, reviewing Pullman's Twice Told Tales in the New Yorker

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 Circling The Waggins...  

Here is the Amazon review (unedited) by Bob Tarte, author of the delightful "Kitty Cornered," "Enslaved by Ducks," and "Fowl Weather"...Read more reviews and a synopsis...Here is the link: Circling The Waggins

"There's a lot more to living with dogs than wet noses and going walkies. Cayr Ariel Wulff entertainingly chronicles the rocky flip side of pet care in "Circling the Waggins," a heroic tale of triumph over turmoil and exhaustion. Wulff and her companion Dalene take in the misfits that have defeated lesser souls, including genius behemoth Waldo - a 75-pound golden/boxer mix with equal parts brains and brawn - an exuberant but mentally challenged Shih-tzu/Chihuahua named Rocket Boy, plus three more dogs, aging cats, and way too many accidentally acquired pet mice. Despite the challenges presented by this demanding and eccentric crew, Wulff's chronicles may still send you to the animal shelter to do a bit of rescue on your own. You'll want to reap the rewards of love and joy which "Waggins" so beautifully describes.

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PAL...People and Their Dogs Helping Others

A PAL Reprise

We first learned of PAL (Washington,DC)and the wonderful work they do, through Ginny Rawls a Young Adult Librarian, in Alexandria, VA. This excerpt from the PAL website describes their work..."Compassionate and friendly pet owners visit with their dogs, bringing joy to people in mental institutions, assisted living, nursing homes and homeless shelters.  Libraries and schools are always eager to help children gain a love of reading, to introduce young readers to learning with creative methods. The Pet volunteers visit libraries and schools for a variety of reading with dog programs..."

 Here is an excerpt from the information sent by Librarian Ginny Rawls...

"In our central library we have the Paws to Read program for kids in grades 1-6. Currently, we have 4-5 dog volunteers who come twice a month with their humans to listen to the kids read.
The children are excited, happy, and love reading to dogs.

Sometimes, they want to expose the dog to their favorite stories or have asked if it's ok to read to them about cats and tigers. I tell them that it's a good idea for dogs to know as much about cats as possible. Sometimes, they do read about dogs, though. I display several dog books in our storyroom during the program and each dog has a bookmark with a photo and information about the dog breed, favorite foods, activities, and the dog's favorite book..."
The photo of the Cub Scounts and the  therapy reading  dogs was taken by PAL volunteer, Tracy Baetz

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Castle In The Mist -- Volume 2 in the Planet Of The Dogs Series

It was a cold, dark night when the howling dogs awakened Prince Ukko from his sleep.  It was a sound he had never heard before, and caused a cold feeling of fear to move through his body.  After a few minutes, the howling stopped, but now Prince Ukko was unable to sleep... 

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Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore or via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's... 

Librarians, teachers, bookstores...Order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount. 

Therapy reading dog owners, librarians, teachers and organizations with therapy reading dog programs -- you can write us at planetofthedogs@gmail.com and we will send you free reader copies from the Planet of the Dogs Series...Read Dog Books to Dogs....Ask any therapy reading dog: "Do you like it when the kids read dog books to you?"

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"The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over." - Aesop

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We received this important notice from Elizabeth Bird of the NYPL's  excellent Children's Literary Salon announcing  their next free event on Saturday, May 3rd, at 2:00 p.m.

 
The Phantom Tollbooth: Beyond Expectations
 
Join us for a screening of the stellar documentary The Phantom Tollbooth: Beyond Expectations, presented by editor and director Hannah Jayanti. Through interviews, animation and archival materials, the documentary traces the friendship between author Norton Juster and Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Jules Feiffer, and the wit and wisdom of the novel over half a century.  The documentary runs at 56 minutes.  There will be a Q&A with Ms. Jayanti after the showing.

This event will be held in the South Court Auditorium in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (the main branch of NYPL on 42nd Street & 5th Avenue).  
 
PLEASE NOTE: ATTENDANCE IS ON A FIRST COME FIRST SERVED BASIS. WE CAN ONLY ACCOMMODATE 175 ATTENDEES FOR THIS EVENT. WE ARE NOT TAKING RSVPS. PLEASE COME ON TIME IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SECURE A SEAT... If you have any further questions do not hesitate to contact me at elizabethbird@bookops.org.
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 Ann Staub at Pawsitively Pets...

This photo by Ann of her dog dog, Shiner, accompanied by her warm review (and Giveaway) of
Planet Of The Dogs, truly brightened my day. Shiner is reading Planet Of The Dogs, and Ann reports that, "After reading through the book a little, Shiner informed me that she'd most like to visit Biscuit Town on the Planet of the Dogs...

Planet Of The Dogs is a fictional story perfect for young readers and adults alike...The main characters in the story are two children - Daisy and Bean. They even get to travel to the Planet of the Dogs themselves. I personally think it would be awesome if such a world did exist. I'd love to visit some of the places in the book. There's Shepherd Hill, Poodletown, Retriever Meadows, Muttville, Hound Dog Hamlet, and Shaggy Corners...

Simply put, there is a lot that us humans can learn from our furry canine companions. This book is great at showing just how compassionate dogs really are."

Ann Staub, after working five years as a veterinary technician, retired to be a full time mom (two daughters), dog and pet owner, and blogger. 

 

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E Book Comprehension Study

This excerpt is from Annie Murphy Paul's  Motherlode article, 

Students Reading E-Books Are Losing Out, Study Suggests

"While young readers find these digital products very appealing, their multitude of features may diffuse children’s attention, interfering with their comprehension of the text, Ms. Smith and the Schugars found. It seems that the very “richness” of the multimedia environment that e-books provide — heralded as their advantage over printed books — may overwhelm children’s limited working memory, leading them to lose the thread of the narrative or to process the meaning of the story less deeply... 

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More on Books and Ebooks ...excerpted from Bookkends in The New York Times, in a Q and A with author Moshin Hamid...How Do E-Books Change the Reading Experience?

..."I crave technology, connectivity. But I crave solitude too. As we enter the cyborg era, as we begin the physical shift to human-machine hybrid, there will be those who embrace this epochal change, happily swapping cranial space for built-in processors. There will be others who reject the new ways entirely,...

In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make possible a less intermediated, less fractured experience. They guard our aloneness. That is why I love them, and why I read printed books still."

Mohsin Hamid is the author of three novels: “Moth Smoke,” a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” a New York Times best seller that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and adapted for film; and, most recently, “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia.”

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CAYR ARIEL WULFF HAS DONE IT AGAIN!

 

An unedited Amazon review by Krysta Kaos 

 

How to Change the World in 30 Seconds

 

"I was so excited to hear that this book was being written. After purchasing it I sat down & read the whole thing the same night. This book is a great read for anyone who is into animal rescue or anyone who is just an animal lover who feels like there is nothing they can do. VERY informative & VERY well written. I will be keeping this book close by to refer back to for the amazing resources. One person CAN make a difference!"

 

 

 

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A Video Visit withJumpy the Amazing dog...off the charts!!

 

 

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More helpful information from Nebraska...

How To Housebreak Your Dog Without Breaking Your Home

Though it may not seem like it sometimes, especially when they are a puppy, dogs have a natural instinct to keep their living space clean — especially in close headquarters. Learning how to housebreak your dog with some help from you, through patient and gradual housebreaking, will help your dog learn happily how to do their business outside. This will not only improve the health and happiness of your dog, but also preserving the cleanliness of your home. The housebreaking process can be a messy business—expect several accidents to happen before your puppy or dog gets it—but it doesn’t have to destroy your home or your relationship with your dog.... Here is the link to read it all: Housebreak

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"We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace."  

—Albert Schweitzer, "The Philosophy of Civilization" - 

I found this quote on Sunbear Squad where guidlines, free wallet cards, and "how to" save a dog in distress information are available at no cost for all good people.

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 "MY father was a St Bernard, my mother was a Collie, but I am a Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me. I do not know these nice distinctions myself." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

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March Winds of Time, Books, Kids and Dogs

            

The boundaries shift and change as children grow with the winds of time. 

Children's stories, fables and mythology  open doors to both the real world and to the world of fantasy and imagination.

Fairy tales have been retold and endured through many cultures. Aesop's fables have been part of children's literature for over 2000 years. 

This blog is dedicated to the power of story and the worlds of wonder and imagination that are the world of children's literature. And to therapy dogs, that help reluctant children banish fear of reading  

The illustration from Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle

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                 LITWORLD

Litworld opens the doors of possibilities in life to disadvantaged youth through books, reading, mentors, and guidance.

LitWorld celebrated World Read Aloud Day on March 5.

 Lit World is bringong literacy, books, and empowerment to underprivileged children in Ghana, ndia, Haiti, Kenya, Kosovo, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru the Philipines, Rwanda, Uganda, and the USA.

More than 793 million people are illiterate worldwide. Two thirds of these are women.

 

LitWorld places a special focus on young women and girls ages 10-14

"LitWorld’s strength-based model of social emotional learning fills a critical gap in education... LitClub and LitCamp curriculum cultivates core strengths that inherently exist within each child. The LitWorld 7 Strengths – Belonging, Curiosity, Kindness, Friendship, Confidence, Courage, and Hope – are ideas that are key to building resilience."

Barking Planet salutes  LITWORLD and their founder and leader Pam Allyn for their wonderful work.

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Gabriel's Angels...helping heal abused children in Arizona.

Pam Gaber and her therapy dog, Gabriel, began working together in 2000 in the Crisis Nursery, a shelter for abused children in Phoenix, Arizona. Gabriel had an immediate positive impact on frightened, withdrawn children. This was the beginning of Gabriel's Angels. During his 10 years of service as a Delta Society registered therapy dog, Gabriel visited over 5,000 abused, neglected, and at-risk children.

The organization has continued to grow since that time. Gabriel's Angels now serves 13,000 children a year through over 115 agencies through over 150 volunteer Pet Therapy teams. Teams visit each participating agency on a consistent schedule to build trust, empathy and respect in the children.  

Here's a Link to a video that will take you into the world of abused children and the wonderful work accomplished by Gabriel's Angels' therapy dog teams.

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This dog is a genius...

His name is Mr. Peabody and he is winning at the box office.

Mr. Peabody, the most accomplished dog in the world, inventor extraordinary, and his adopted son, Sherman, use their time machine for extraordinary adventures...

Dreanworks has a big hit, based on a dog as a parent to a mischievous boy and their travels on the winds of time...past, present and future.

 

Here's a link to trailer(s) Dreamworks:  IMDB

Meanwhile, Frozen has earned over 396 millon dollars; and The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, has earned over 424,000,000 dollars.

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Divergent

Reworking the Hunger Games with a book and a movie sequel...

Here are excerpts from reviewers of the movie and the book...

Divergent was first published in 2011 and written by the then 22 year old Veronica Roth. The book made the best-seller lists the first week it was published in 2011 and has sold over 11 million copies. Like Hunger Games, it became a trilogy. Here is an excerpt from an insightful review by Susan Dominus, in the New YorkTimes 

 " ...though Roth’s “Divergent” is rich in plot and imaginative details, it suffers by comparison with Collins’s opus. The shortcoming would not be so noticeable were there less blatant overlap between the two. Both 'Divergent' and 'The Hunger Games' feature appealing, but not conventionally pretty, young women with toughness to spare. Both start out with public sorting rituals that determine the characters’ futures. And both put the narrators in contrived, bloody battles that are in fact competitions witnessed by an audience. Even the language sounds familiar..."

Here are excerpts from incisive movie reviews by Manhola Dargis in the NY Times and Ty Burr in the Boston Globe...

…"Veronica Roth, who wrote the book “Divergent” and its two hot-selling follow-ups, tends to avoid mentioning “The Hunger Games,” but the similarities between these young-adult juggernauts are conspicuous in the extreme. “The Hunger Games” is a dystopian tale set in a postwar North America divided into 13 districts; “Divergent” is a dystopian tale set in postwar Chicago divided into
five factions. Each series pivots on a gutsy teenage heroine who fights to the death like a classic male hero..."

Here is the Link to read all of Ms Dargis review.

And here is Ty Burr's impassioned review;

“Divergent” is almost good enough to make you forget what a cynical exercise it is on every possible level. The original 2011 young adult novel by Veronica Roth — reasonably engrossing, thoroughly disposable — reads exactly like what it is: an ambitious young author’s attempt to re-write “The Hunger Games” without bringing the lawyers down on her head. The folks at production company Summit Entertainment are happy to turn the book into a movie because it allows them to crank up the franchise machinery that has worked so well for “Hunger Games,” “Twilight,” and the “Harry Potter” films, only without the bother of creating something fresh." Here is the Link to read all of Ty Burr's review:Globe

 Here is the link to the action filled trailer for Divergent 

Divergent sold $56 million in tickets for its first weekend...the YA market speaks!

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Movies inspire mock weapons for 8-12 year old girls

Here is an excerpt from a fascinating article in the New York Times article by Hilary Stout and ELIZABETH A. HARRIS

"Heroines for young girls are rapidly changing, and the toy industry — long adept at
capitalizing on gender stereotypes — is scrambling to catch up.

Toy makers have begun marketing a more aggressive line of playthings and weaponry for girls — inspired by a succession of female warrior heroes like Katniss,  the Black Widow of “The Avengers,” Merida of “Brave” and now, Tris of the book and new movie “Divergent” — even as the industry still clings to every shade of pink...

The premier of the movie “Divergent” this weekend is only adding to the marketing frenzy
around weapon-wielding girls. A Tris Barbie doll, complete with her signature three-raven tattoo, is already for sale on Amazon... 

All of this is enough to make parents’ — particularly mothers’ — heads spin, even as they reach for their wallets. While the segregation of girls’ and boys’ toys in aisles divided between pink and camouflage remains an irritant, some also now wonder whether their daughters should adopt the same war games that they tolerate rather uneasily among their sons...

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Five Hundred New Fairy Tales and a "harsher dose of reality"...

The headline and the article that appeared in the Guardian proclaimed that 500 new fairy tales had been discovered in Germany... a collection of fairytales gathered by historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth that had been locked away in an archive in Regensburg for over 150 years. 

This was in March 2012. However, I was unaware of the discovery that these tales existed until I recently read the following in Maria Tatar's children's lierature blog, Breezes from Wonderland 

"Returning to blogging after I finish translating The Enchanted Quill, an anthology of nineteenth-century fairy tales collected by Franz Xaver Schonwerth.   Once you read these stories, you will abandon any ideas about the literary transmission of fairy tales–these are tales in the raw, not cooked to suit the tastes of the literate..."

Reading this led me to read Ms Tatar's New Yorker article entitled, Cinderfellas: The Long-Lost Fairy Tales, 

Here are excerpts from this informative and compelling article::

"Bavarian fairy tales going viral? Last week, the Guardian reported that five hundred unknown fairy tales, languishing for over a century in the municipal archive of Regensburg, Germany, have come to light. The news sent a flutter through the world of fairy-tale enthusiasts, their interest further piqued by the detail that the tales—which had been compiled in the mid-nineteenth century by an antiquarian named Franz Xaver von Schönwerth—had been kept under lock and key. How astonishing then to discover that many of those “five hundred new tales” are already in print and on the shelves at Widener Library at Harvard (where I teach literature, folklore and mythology) and at Yale, Stanford, and Berkeley.

Schönwerth—a man whom the Grimm brothers praised for his “fine ear” and accuracy as a collector—published three volumes of folk customs and legends in the mid-nineteenth century, but the books soon began gathering dust on library shelves...

Schönwerth’s tales have a compositional fierceness and energy rarely seen in stories gathered by the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault,..Schönwerth gives us a harsher dose of reality than most collections..."

Here is the link to read more of this fascinating and informative article: Tatar

The illustrations, from the top down, are by Warwick Goble, Arthur Rackham, and George Cruikshank.

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Non-violence

I don't want to mislead our blog readers about non-violence in a violent world. But perhaps in our Planet Of The Dogs series they will see something of the possibilities for non-violence in the "real" world, as the dogs, with their unconditional courage, loyalty, and cleverness overcome invaders, swords, and warriors on horses...and bring peace to the land. 

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               Newgrange- where time stands still  

 

 

 Newgrange rests on a hill in Ireland.

It was in place 3000 years before Christ, a thousand years before Stonehenge, and 500 years before the pyramids.

In Ireland, it is known as a Thin Place...

Author Bonnie McKernan writes of Thin Places on her blog..."where time stands still, beauty enthralls, the bigger picture is glimpsed... 

Do you remember that stretch of road or river or mountainside you immediately felt a connection to? A place where the draw was so visceral it elicited a feeling of peace and excitement concurrently? It might have resulted from sensory delights like the sun on your face, fresh air in your lungs, a spectacular view—or from a scene that stirred your imagination or recharged your faith. However this attraction defined itself, you were thoroughly transfixed, wanting to stay longer and feel more.

Early Celtic Christians once called such experiences thin places, where the veil between the natural world and spiritual realm seems especially transparent—where time stands still, beauty enthralls, the bigger picture is glimpsed… where one feels closer to an omnipresent God..."

In a future blog, I will write more of Thin Places and the myths, folklore and fairies of Ireland.

Here is a link to see a brief National Geographic video on Newgrange. 

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The importance of children's books in opening the mind to the door of life and the world of imagination is beyond measure. The importance of a dog in the life of a child is also beyond measure. It was from thoughts like these that the Planet Of The Dogs Series evolved. Read Sample Chapters at: Planet Of The Dogs 

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Fairy tale legends often have a timeless quality...

Boy, Snow, Bird...Snow White for Adults

Helen Oyeyemi has transformed Snow White into a critically acclaimed book for adults that deals with timeless questions, identity and mystery. Here is an excerpt from a top flight reviewer,  YVONNE ZIPP, fiction critic for the CS Monitor 

"Helen Oyeyemi upends the whole Snow White story, tossing out apple, dwarves, glass coffin – and replacing them with an unsettling book that casts a spell of its own...

As with her fairy tale counterpart, Boy Novak (a young woman) is fond of her own reflection.“Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy,” says Boy, who would gaze into them, kissing her reflection or setting two mirrors opposite one another to create an endless series of reflections.

Her daughter and stepdaughter have the opposite problem: Sometimes their reflection doesn’t show up at all.

All three women learn the ways that mirrors can lie during the course of the story, most of which is set in the 1950s in a fictional Massachusetts town called Flax Hill. The novel hinges on several plot revelations, which I am not going to spoil. This is one book where I would recommend you not read anything in advance, even the back cover: Just go buy it."

               
                 Illustration for the Grimm's Snow White by Walter Crane. 


 
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"Someday you will be old enough to read fairy tales again."- C.S. Lewis

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Therapy reading dog owners, librarians and teachers with therapy reading dog programs...You can write us at planetofthedogs@gmail.com and we will send you free reader copies from the Planet of the Dogs Series.

Read sample chapters of all the books in the Planet Of The Dogs series by clicking here:Sample Chapters

Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore or via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's, the Book Depository and... 

Librarians, teachers, bookstores...Order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount.

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"As a parent and a teacher, therefore, I argue for the continuance of books in an age marked by visual technology. There remains nothing like the feel of a book in the hand, nothing like the security offered by a book in the bed (an experience recorded in the West from at least the twelfth century)...If there is a future to children's literature, it must lie in the artifacts of writing and the place of reading in the home. To understandthe history of children's literature is to understand the history of all forms of literary experience."-

Seth Lerer writing in "Children's Literature, A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter".

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National Puppy Day was March 23..."a day to celebrate the magic and unconditional love that puppies bring to our lives. It’s also a day to help save orphaned puppies across the globe and educate the public about the horrors of puppy mills, as well as further the mission for a nation of puppy-free pet stores. While National Puppy Day supports responsible breeders, it does encourage prospective families to consider adoption as a first choice"...To read more, visit the site of Colleen Paige, who founded National Puppy Day nine years ago. 

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 Circling the Waggins 

Have you ever wondered what sort of chaos ensues in a home full of rescue pets? Author C.A. Wulff  lets readers experience the surprises, the laughter, and the wonder of it all in her book “Circling the Waggins; How 5 Misfit Pets Saved Me from Bewilderness”, a personal account of just such a household.Wulff’s pack of dogs, cats and mice all have unique personalities, some of them intriguing, nearly all of them challenging – even for a veteran of rescue! Circling the Waggins examines the bonds we create with pets, no matter how big or small, and how our pets affect and enrich our lives.
Wulff’s honest story recounts the ups and downs of letting furry family members into our hearts. Circling the Waggins is available in print and for kindle.
.........................
 
"Imagine having a mother who worries that you read too much. The question is, what is it that's supposed to happen to people who read too much? How can you tell when someone's crossed the line."  
Helen Oyemeni, Boy, Snow, Bird
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Podcasting at the Children's Literary Salon

The New York Public Library announces their next Children's Literary Salon to be held on Saturday, April 19th at 2:00 p.m.: The Topic is Podcasting Children’s Books: Ins and Outs, Ups and Downs

These fascinating discussions are lively, informative and free...This event will take place in the Stephen A. Schwarzman building (the main branch of New York Public Library) in the South Court Auditorium. 

For any questions and comments please contact Elizabeth Bird at elizabethbird@bookops.org.
..............................
 

 
Here's another excellent article for dog lovers at Way Cool Dogs...
 
Six Reasons Why You Should Adopt A Dog From A Pound 

You should adopt from a dog pound — whether it is a nearby dog shelter or your local pound — as it is one of the best ways to acquire a new and loyal companion. Unfortunately, many people opt to purchase their dog from breeders or pet stores, which often get their dogs from puppy mills and other unlicensed breeders.

Many dogs in a dog pound remain homeless and are often put down due to overcrowding. If you’re thinking about getting a dog, consider the following reasons for adopting a mixed breed from a dog shelter or dog pound:

Mixed breeds are healthier dogs

Mixed breeds are, in general, far healthier and longer lived than purebred dogs. Many purebred dogs are prone to diseases caused by genetic vulnerabilities which have been aggravated through centuries of  inbreeding. A mixed breed is far less...   Read about all six reasons at this link: WCD

The illustration is by Stella Mustanoja McCarty from Castle In The Mist

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Listen to the Wind in the Willows -- free 
 

Thanks to the BBC, an audio version of Kenneth Grahame's  The Wind in the Willows  is available to all -- at no charge.  This link also offers several other free recordings of enduring children's stories.

The classic story of Mole, Ratty, Toad and Badger is told in 10 episodes and read by Bernard Cribbins. The reading is delightful, very British, and accompanied by music and sound effects. Lesson plans and discussion ideas for educators, home schoolers, and librarians accompany the audio readings.

.............................

Bringing the World of Reading to Kids

 

Wendi Huttner, a mom and a breeder/ trainer of Labradors, and Deborah Glessner, dog lover and retired librarian, organized and continue to guide Nor'wester Readers.  A grass roots, hands on organization, Nor'wester is a vital part of their Pennsylvania community in bringing the world of reading to kids.

Here are some of the Nor'wester Canine Book Buddies, volunteer therapy reading dog teams participating in the Northampton Township Library program. Several Nor'wester Readers teams also volunteered at the Expressions Day Camp, a camp for boys and girls (age 4-18) with high functioning autism, Asperger's Syndrome, non-verbal learning disabilities, and other types of social challenges. 

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The Book Depository

Free Worldwide Shipping of the Planet Of The Dogs Series 

Free Worldwide Delivery
"The Book Depository (Guernsey) is an international bookseller shipping our books free of charge, worldwide, to over 100 countries. By working with various world postal authorities and other carriers, we are always looking to add more countries to this list."

All books available to All: Currently, The Book Depository is able to ship over nine million unique titles, within 48 hours, from our fulfillment centre in Gloucester, United Kingdom. This figure is increasing every day. Apart from publishers, distributors and wholesalers, we even list and supply books from other retailers.

.....................................

 “There is no psychology in a fairy tale. The characters have little interior life; their motives are clear and obvious.” Phillip Pullman in his Introduction to Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimmm  

.....................................

What should you do,  what can you do, if you see an injured dog or one in distress?

For answers, examples, true stories and more, visit Sunbear Squad...Let the experience of compassionate dog lovers guide you...free Wallet Cards & Pocket  Posters,  Informative and practical guidance...Visit SunBear Squad

.............................

"A man may smile and bid you hail

Yet wish you to the devil;

But when a good dog wags his tail,

You know he's on the level."

Author unknown

................................

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February... New Mythology, Books, Kids and Dogs

 

Is this the New Mythology? 

George RR Martin has created extremely popular stories that encompass the past in both book form and television.

More than 24 million books in the series, A Song of Ice and Fire, have been sold.

More than 14 million viewers were watching Game Of Thrones by the end of 2013.

Game Of Thrones, like the European history on which it is based, is filled with treachery, violence, and darkness.

Currently, there are five books in the series.  They have continued to grow in popularity since the publication of the first book, A Game of Thrones; they have been translated into more than 20 languages.

 The viewing audience for the immensely popular Game Of Thrones TV show on HBO also continues to grow and is now in its fourth season. 

European history, particularly the wars and brutality of the middle ages, is echoed in this fantasy drama series. Conflicts over power, violent dynastic struggles,and treachery are ongoing. Locations, including northern Ireland, Malta, Croatia, Iceland, Morocco, Scotland and the United States play a major part in adding an air of authenticity. 

 In our current era, and in the prosperous tradition exemplified by Disney, the new mythology created by George RR Martin has spawned popular video games as well as a plethora of merchandise (including a $10,500.00 wristwatch) and clothing.

Here is a link to an excellent trailer that provides a brief overview of the first three seasons. 

An Interview and Insights from George RR Martin 

Game of Thrones author George RR Martin talks to Alan Yentob on BBC Arts and Culture.

In his discussion of influences, Martin refers to Tolkien, and drawing upon the traditions of fantasy literature; he explains how the grittiness of real English and Scottish history influenced his world of Westeros. He says he was also inspired by the plotting and intrigue of Machiavelli's era during the Italian renaissance...

Martin also discusses differences in characterization between his books and HBO's Game of Thrones television series.

 Here is a quote by Lord Varys from the video series: “Power resides where men believe it resides; it’s a trick, a shadow on the wall, and a very small man can cast a very large shadow.” ...this reminds me of a famous scene in American Hustle, where Christian Bale (as Irving Rosenfeld, the con man) saysto Bradley Cooper, "People believe what they want to believe." 

............................

The public popularity of George RR Martin and his new mythology is also well illustrated in this anecdote from a book tour that followed publication of his fourth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, Feast Of Crows..."Meanwhile, crowds have been lining up for hours on Mr. Martin's publication tour to hear him read. 'It's unlike anything I've ever seen, except for hosting events for rock stars,' said Carolyn T. Hughes, an events coordinator for Barnes & Noble at Astor Place in Manhattan, where Mr. Martin read in November. ' "  Dinitia Smith, NY Tmes, December, 2005

A Critic Writes ...Here is an excerpt from Emily Nussbam's New Yorker Review

“Game of Thrones” is an ideal show to binge-watch on DVD: with its cliffhangers and Grand Guignol dazzle, it rewards a bloody, committed immersion in its foreign world—and by this I mean not only the medieval-ish landscape of Westeros (the show’s mythical realm) but the genre from which it derives. Fantasy—like television itself, really—has long been burdened with audience condescension: the assumption that it’s trash, or juvenile, something intrinsically icky and low"...

..............

Children will find food for nightmares, confusion, and violence in the series. For example: a captive woman with no weapons must fight a fierce bear; a wedding feast becomes a murderous bloodbath; a young teenage girl watches her beloved father have his head chopped off amidst a cheering crowd...sweet dreams kiddies.

Here is a quote from the powerful, beautiful, and ruthless Cersei Lannister: “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”

..........................

Traditions from the Past...

Author Phillip Pullman, discussed the passing on of fairy tales, folklore, and legends from the past in the Guardian. He was prompted in this by the publication of his own excellent retelling of fairy tales by the brothers Grimm.  

"But a fairy tale is not a text of that sort ( stories written down word for word). It's a transcription made on one or more occasions of the words spoken by one of many people who have told this tale. And all sorts of things, of course, affect the words that are finally written down. A storyteller might tell the tale more richly, more extravagantly, one day than the next, when he's tired or not in the mood. A transcriber might find her own equipment failing: a cold in the head might make hearing more difficult, or cause the writing-down to be interrupted by sneezes or coughs. Another accident might affect it too: a good tale might find itself in the mouth of a less than adequate teller.It is understood that during the Finnish reformation in the 16th century the clergy forbade all telling and singing of pagan rites and stories. In conjunction with the arrival of European poetry and music this caused a significant reduction in the number of traditional folk songs and their singers. Thus the tradition faded somewhat but was never totally eradicated..." Read it all...here is the Link: Pullman. The illustration by Arthur Rackham 

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 The Missing Pet Nightmare

More than 1,000 pets have gone missing in just the state of Ohio over the past eleven months. The nationwide total is in the hundreds of thousands!

Many of these pets find themselves in shelters hoping their families will find them, but sadly many don't make it out alive. Author C.A.Wulff with the help of her coadmin at Lost & Found Ohio Pets has written Finding Fido  to address this sad reality.
 
This Barking Planet book gives solid advice on how to prevent losing a pet, tips for what to do if you find a stray animal, and a step-by-step plan in case the unthinkable happens and your pet goes missing.
 
100% of the proceeds from sales of this book benefit The Beagle Freedom Project, an offshoot of Animal Rescue Media Education (ARME), which works to rescue dogs used in laboratory research and place them in loving, forever homes. Available in print and for kindle. Your purchase helps animals worldwide.
 
 
..................................
 
  
Does Success Spell Nightmares...Today's New Mythology...
 
The Desolation of Smaug, Frozen, and Hunger Games-Catching Fire, roll on...these movies, made from Classic Fairy Tales and YA literature, are all great popular and financial successes. The 3 films combined revenues exceed one billion dollars ! However, there are other vital considerations...
 
 Frozen is scary for some young children.
Smaug and Hunger Games are guaranteed to frighten, confuse and give children nightmares. 

 
The Game Of Thrones is dark and violent and not for kids.
 
........................................
 
The New Media and the New Mythology
Fairy tales, folklore and mythology were once part of an oral tradition. With the spread
of books and literacy, they were reinterpreted and passed on to all ages. Now we have many more forms for passing on what was once primarily an oral tradition: movies, games, apps, websites, TV shows, and music. Adults, young adults, and children are surrounded by the new media marketplace.
 
Common Sense Media, utilizing reviews by parents, kids and educators, makes age appropriate recommendations for the new media.
 
Here are their recomendations for today's new mythologies: Smaug  - age 11 (based on 52 reviews) ; Frozen - age 5 (based on 109 reviews); Hunger Games,Catching Fire - age 13 (based on 96 reviews); and Game Of Thrones - not for kids, minimum age-16 (based on 77 reviews).
........................................ 

Illustration by E.H. Shepard

A bsolutely Mindless...

Jack Zipes is one of the most prolific and respected scholar-authors in fairy tale and folklore studies. He has long been a critic of Disney's sweetening and romanticising -- as in Cinderella --  of classic tales. He spoke with Annabelle Smith of the Smithsonian  about mainstream movies adapted from fairy tales. The interview, relevant today, was actually conducted shortly after the release of Snow White and the Huntsman..

"There has been interest in fairy tales since the 1890s. All of this spectacular talk is not really a new interest in fairy tales, but a new way to exaggerate and embellish productions that cost millions of dollars. What’s new is the hyping—films that are just absolutely mindless can make it seem like you are going to be sent into a world that will astonish and delight you for a couple of hours while you eat your popcorn.

What’s your opinion on the adaptations that have come up over the years?

We have every right and should adapt tales because society changes. But the Grimms would flip over if they were alive today. They were better known during their time as scholarly writers; they were in the pursuit of the essence of story telling. By collecting different versions of every tale they published, they hoped to resuscitate the linguistic cultural tradition that keeps people together—stories that were shared with the common people. In these adaptations you can gain a good sense of whether artists are w riting to make money or to celebrate themselves. As critics, we owe it to our culture to dismiss 95 percent of the stuff we see..."

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"Wild Dog crawled into the Cave and laid his head on the Woman’s lap… And the Woman said, 'His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend'.”

Just So Stories --  Rudyard Kipling.

................................

No, Dogs Aren't People... 

Salon...

Jason G Goldman, developmental psychologist, science writer, and blogger in the Scientific American (The Thoughtful Animal Blog), responded to a New York Times op-ed article that posited that dogs have emotions like humans. Here are excerpts from his thoughtful article entitled:  No, Dogs Aren't People  

"Are dogs really people? Gregory Berns seems to think so. On Sunday the New York Times ran an op-ed by Berns, a neuroeconomist and author, titled “Dogs Are People, Too.” But all the puppy-friendly Halloween costumes in the world can’t turn a dog into a person...

Perhaps domestication has allowed us to see a bit of ourselves in our canine companions. We made dogs
in our own image. We were so successful in domesticating dogs that they even outperform chimpanzees when it comes to understanding human social cues. Unlike other animals, dogs do not need their desired behaviors to be reinforced with food; praise from a human is reward enough. Given their unique place in human culture, it’s easy to see why we look into Fido’s eyes and see ourselves reflected back..."

The photos above, from PAL (People Animals Love), are clear examples of the canine connection, the bonding and caring between dogs and people, and the primary factor in our relationships with dogs. PAL works with therapy dogs to bring friendship and healing love to people of all ages. PAL posts this motto on their site..."HUMANS LEND A HELPING HAND, ANIMALS LEND A HELPING PAW"

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Click the link for a wonderful video smile for dog lovers, children and even those who are not dog lovers...How To Pick Out A Dog, wherin Harvey, a dog, creates his own myth.

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The  Literary Voice of the Brothers Grimm

Every book, whether written for children or adults, has a "voice". It may be, "See spot
run",  or "It was the best of times , it was the worst of times"; there is always a written
"voice". What voice did the Grimms use in their fairy tales? 

"The Grimms' fairy tales are not written in the language of real children, nor do they seek to evoke the sounds of childish speech. Rather, the Grimms synthesized folk stories, personal remembrances, and an already rich tradition of literary fairy tales (from those of Charles Perrault in the 1690s to those of Clemens Brentano in the earlly 1800s) to create a literary language akin to their sense of early language itself"...Seth Lerer,in his Children's Literature, A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter

 

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 The Castle and the huge surrounding forests are covered in snow. Inside the castle are the kidnapped children. There will be war unless the dogs can free them.

Here is an excerpt from the review of Castle In The Mist by Ann
Staub on Pawsitively Pets..."The dogs lead the evil Prince on a hunt to capture them in an effort to save the kidnapped children. This part of the story is very exciting and has great suspense. It's fun to read about the dog's strategies in outsmarting the Prince's soldiers. As I'm sure you're all aware, dogs are very clever creatures and this book showcases their intelligence perfectly!...I'd recommend Castle In The Mist for children as well as adults. "

Read sample chapters of all the books in the Planet Of The Dogs series by clicking here: Books

Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore or via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's...

Librarians, teachers, bookstores...Order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount.

Therapy reading dog owners, librarians and teachers with therapy reading dog programs -- you can write us at barkingplanet@aol.com and we will send you free reader copies from the Planet of the Dogs Series...Read Dog Books to Dogs....Ask any therapy reading dog: "Do you like it when the kids read dog books to you?"

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The Canine Connection and Can Do Canines

We live in an era where many wonderful organizations, supported by volunteers, dedicated staff, and caring people are utilizing the canine connection and the special abilities of dogs to make an enormous difference in the lives of people with severe and often dangerous handicaps. 

What do you do if you are confined to a wheelchair and you are unable to open a door and retrieve a cordless phone?

Can you hear a smoke alarm, a doorbell, or a ringing phone?

Do you have an autistic child who may suddenly become excited and run into danger?

Do you know a diabetic who was alone, didn't know that their blood suger was low, and had a seizure?

Seizures can also come from epilepsy and other sources. 

Can Do Canines help people with a variety of disabilities and handicaps. As an example: their Seizure Assist Dogs help people before, during, and after the seizure takes place. Dogs can warn when a seizure is coming. Dogs stay with a person who suffers a seizure attack, licking their face and comforting them while the person is recovering. The dog is trained to bring an emergency phone or to get help from another person. In addition, the dog can wear a backpack with pockets that hold medicine and medical alert information...for more information on these wonderful therapy service dogs, visit Can Do Canines. 

 

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The Kalevala...the Mythology of Finland

February 28 is Kalevala Day in Finland...Flags will fly from virtually every building and home... 

I wrote of the Kalevala in our last blog. This ancient tome contains the folk legends of Finland, passed on through the centuries in rhythmic verse by rune singers ( story tellers). The Kalevala, when published in the mid-nineteenth century -- after 600 years of Swedish rule -- swept through Finnish consciousness, igniting feelings of national identity and a great flourishing in all the arts.

I have learned that there is now a Kalevala Children's Game

Kalevala Children's Game...

There is also the wonderful children's book of the Kalevala, written and illustrated by Mauri Kunnas 

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No Books in New Library in Texas !

As reported in Galley Cat by Dianna Dilworth

"Bexar County, Texas has opened a new library that has no books inside. Instead the library is outfitted with iPad stations and iMacs loaded with digital books available to check out, making it the first digital library in the country..."                               Here is the link: BiblioTech

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DOGS for KIDS...Information from Way Cool Dogs

The Best Dog Breeds for Children: Which One Should You Choose?

"When it comes to choosing the best dog breeds for children, it’s no good simply choosing the dog you think is cutest or the breed from their favorite film. Different dogs need different levels of care and attention, some dogs get more excitable than others, and some are more placid. You need to take everything about a dog breed into account before deciding that it’s right for your family and home life! We’ve compiled a list of the best dog breeds for children to help you get an idea of the kind of dogs you should be looking at..." Read on to learn more: Children

The illustration, by Stella Mustanoja McCarty, is from Planet Of The Dogs.

................................... 

Biscuit and Gravy

Thanks to Richard Bradley (A Rock In My Shoe), in our December Christmas blog, we have published photos of his dogs dressed for the holiday season. Alas, the dogs, Darcy and Caboose, have passed on but their holiday spirit remains.  Richard's new dogs, Biscuit and Gravy will carry on this tradition in our next December blog.

 

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A Book Of Enchantment

Maria Tatar's book, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, is beautiful.

The insights are equal to the wonderful array of illustrations in color by Edmund Burne-Jones, Gustave Dore, Arthur Rackham and seven others.

There are 26 annotated classic fairy tales and biographies of the authors.

This book is itself a classic. 

 

  ..................

"Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination." Anthony Burgess 

..................

 

Therapy Dog Uses Surfboard

The Human Canine Connection has infinite variations...

in this video, an Irish Setter named Ricochet,  rides a surfboard and opens the door to self confidence and joy for children with disabilities.

.....................................

       educating alice

Close Reading...Information and Insights 

 by Monica Edinger, dedicated 4th grade teacher, author, and children's book lover who writes from decades of caring experience ...Here is an excerpt:

"I’ve been curious about the attention now being paid to the skill of close reading, something I began doing with my 4th graders decades ago. Judiciously. By that, I mean I only do it enough for the children to see how much pleasure they can take in the experience, but not enough for it to become a chore. Frankly, some of the current suggestions I see for close reading concern me because they seem utilitarian in the extreme and leave out the joy that the experience can be..."

...............................

New York Public Library's Children's Literary Salon is pleased to announce our program this coming Saturday, March 1st at 2:00 p.m.

 

Photography and Children's Books: A Complex Pairing

 

Photographers Nina Crews, Joanne Dugan, Charles R. Smith, and Susan Kuklin, all of whom work in the realm of children's literature, discuss the highs and lows of this skilled but rarely properly credited art.

 

This event will take place in the South Court Auditorium.

..............................

 

Sunbear Squad posted the following Watch Tips for February

Urgent: Extreme cold kills outside tethered dogs and cats, especially those animals without heavy coats, the malnourished, the very young and the elderly. Tethered animals in southern regions are at higher risk for hypothermia because they have not grown heavier coats over time like they would have in cooler climates. Watch for animals that don't have adequate shelter; speak with owners or call the authorities immediately. It's important that the shelter be sited correctly also...

Read more at SunbearSquad

................................

" The dog was created especially for children. He is the god of frolic." Henry Ward Beecher

.................................................

New Mythology, Books, Kids and Dogs

 

Is this the New Mythology? 

George RR Martin has created extremely popular stories that encompass the past in both book form and television.

More than 24 million books in the series, A Song of Ice and Fire, have been sold.

More than 14 million viewers were watching Game Of Thrones by the end of 2013.

Game Of Thrones, like the European history on which it is based, is filled with treachery, violence, and darkness.

Currently, there are five books in the series.  They  have continued to grow in popularity since the publication of the first book, A Game of Thrones; they have been translated into more than 20 lanquages.

 The viewing audience for the immensely popular Game Of Thrones TV show on HBO also continues to grow and is now in its fourth season. 

European history, paricularly the wars and brutality of the middle ages, is echoed in this fantasy drama series. Conflicts over power, violent dynastic struggles,and treachery are ongoing. Locations, including northern Ireland, Malta, Croatia, Iceland, Morocco, Scotland and the United States play a major part in adding an air of authenticity. 

 In our current era, and in the prosperous tradition exemplified by Disney, the new mythology created by George RR Martin has spawned popular video games as well as a plethora of merchandise (including a $10,500.00 wristwatch) and clothing.

Here is a link to an excellent trailer that provides a brief overview of the first three seasons. 

An Interview and Insights from George RR Martin 

Game of Thrones author George RR Martin talks to Alan Yentob on BBC Arts and Culture.

In his discussion of influences, Martin refers to Tolkien, and drawing upon the traditions of fantasy literature; he explains how the grittiness of real English and Scottish history influenced his world of Westeros. He says he was also inspired by the plotting and intrigue of Machiavelli's era during the Italian renaissance...

Martin also discusses differences in characterisation between his books and HBO's Game of Thrones television series.

 Here is a quote by Lord Varys from the video series: “Power resides where men believe it resides; it’s a trick, a shadow on the wall, and a very small man can cast a very large shadow.” ...this reminds me of a famous scene in American Hustle, where Christan Bale (as Irving Rosenfeld, the con man) saysto Bradley Cooper, "People believe what they want to believe." 

............................

The public popularity of George RR Martin and his new mythology is also well illustrated in this anecdote from a book tour that followed publication of his fourth book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, Feast Of Crows..."Meanwhile, crowds have been lining up for hours on Mr. Martin's publication tour to hear him read. 'It's unlike anything I've ever seen, except for hosting events for rock stars,' said Carolyn T. Hughes, an events coordinator for Barnes & Noble at Astor Place in Manhattan, where Mr. Martin read in November. ' "  Dinitia Smith, NY Tmes, December, 2005

A Critic Writes ...Here is an excerpt from Emily Nussbam's New Yorker Review

“Game of Thrones” is an ideal show to binge-watch on DVD: with its cliffhangers and Grand Guignol dazzle, it rewards a bloody, committed immersion in its foreign world—and by this I mean not only the medieval-ish landscape of Westeros (the show’s mythical realm) but the genre from which it derives. Fantasy—like television itself, really—has long been burdened with audience condescension: the assumption that it’s trash, or juvenile, something intrinsically icky and low"...

..............

Children will find food for nightmares, confusion, and violence in the series. For example: a captive woman with no weapons must fight a fierce bear; a wedding feast becomes a muderous bloodbath; a young teenage girl watches her beloved father have his head chopped off amidst a cheering crowd...sweet dreams kiddies.

Here is a quote from the powerful, beautiful, and ruthless Cersei Lannister: “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”

..........................

Traditions from the Past...

Author Phillip Pullman, discussed the passing on of fairy tales, folklore, and legends from the past in the Guardian. He was prompted in this by the publication of his own excellent retelling of fairy tales by the brothers Grimm.  

"But a fairy tale is not a text of that sort ( stories written down word for word). It's a transcription made on one or more occasions of the words spoken by one of many people who have told this tale. And all sorts of things, of course, affect the words that are finally written down. A storyteller might tell the tale more richly, more extravagantly, one day than the next, when he's tired or not in the mood. A transcriber might find her own equipment failing: a cold in the head might make hearing more difficult, or cause the writing-down to be interrupted by sneezes or coughs. Another accident might affect it too: a good tale might find itself in the mouth of a less than adequate teller.It is understood that during the Finnish reformationin the 16th century the clergy forbade all telling and singing of pagan rites and stories. In conjunction with the arrival of European poetry and music this caused a significant reduction in the number of traditional folk songs and their singers. Thus the tradition faded somewhat but was never totally eradicated..." Read it all...here is the Link: Pullman. The illustration by Arthur Rackham 

.................................

 

The Missing Pet Nightmare

More than 1,000 pets have gone missing in just the state of Ohio over the past eleven months. The nationwide total is in the hundreds of thousands!
Many of these pets find themselves in shelters hoping their families will find them, but sadly many don't make it out alive. Author C.A.Wulff with the help of her coadmin at Lost & Found Ohio Pets ( please usethislink: https://www.facebook.com/LostFoundOhioPets ) has written "Finding Fido" ( please link here: https://www.createspace.com/4432402 ) to address this sad reality.
 
This Barking Planet book gives solid advice on how to prevent losing a pet, tips for what to do if you find a stray animal, and a step-by-step plan in case the unthinkable happens and your pet goes missing. 100% of the proceeds from sales of this book benefit The Beagle Freedom Project, ( please link here: http://www.beaglefreedomproject.org/about ) an offshoot of Animal Rescue Media Education (ARME) ( please link here:http://arme.tv/ ), which works to rescue dogs used in laboratory research and place them in loving, forever homes. Available in print and for kindle. Your purchase helps animals worldwide.
 
..................................
 
  
Does Success Spell Nightmares...Today's New Mythology...
 
The Desolation of Smaug, Frozen, and Hunger Games-Catching Fire, roll on...these movies, made from Classic Fairy Tales and YA liteature, are all great popular and financial successes. The 3 films combined revenues exceed one billion dollars ! However, there are other vital considerations...
 
 Frozen is scary for some young children.
Smaug and Hunger Games are guaranteed to frighten, confuse and give children nightmares. 

 
The Game Of Thrones is dark and violent and not for kids.
 
........................................
 
The New Media and the New Mythology
Fairy tales, folklore and mythology were once part of an oral tradition. With the spread
of books and literacy, they were reinterpreted and passed on to all ages. Now we have many more forms for passing on what was once primarily an oral tradition: movies, games, apps, websites, TV shows, and music. Adults, young adults, and children are surrounded by the new media marketplace.
 
Common Sense Media, utilizing reviews by parents, kids and educators, makes age appropriate recommendations for the new media.
 
Here are their reccomendations for today's new mythologies: Smaug  - age 11 (based on 52 reviews) ; Frozen - age 5 (based on 109 reviews); Hunger Games,Catching Fire - age 13 (based on 96 reviews); and Game Of Thrones - not for kids, minimum age-16 (based on 77 reviwes).
........................................ 

Illustration by E.H. Shephard

A bsolutely Mindless...

Jack Zipes is one of the most prolific and respected scholar-authors in fairy tale and folklore studies. He has long been a critic of Disney's sweetning and romanticising -- as in Cinderella --  of classic tales. He spoke with Annable Smith of the Smithsonian  about mainstream movies adapted from fairy tales. The interview, relevant today, was actually conducted shortly after the release of Snow White and the Huntsman..

"There has been interest in fairy tales since the 1890s. All of this spectacular talk is not really a new interest in fairy tales, but a new way to exaggerate and embellish productions that cost millions of dollars. What’s new is the hyping—films that are just absolutely mindless can make it seem like you are going to be sent into a world that will astonish and delight you for a couple of hours while you eat your popcorn.

What’s your opinion on the adaptations that have come up over the years?

We have every right and should adapt tales because society changes. But the Grimms would flip over if they were alive today. They were better known during their time as scholarly writers; they were in the pursuit of the essence of story telling. By collecting different versions of every tale they published, they hoped to resuscitate the linguistic cultural tradition that keeps people together—stories that were shared with the common people. In these adaptations you can gain a good sense of whether artists are w riting to make money or to celebrate themselves. As critics, we owe it to our culture to dismiss 95 percent of the stuff we see..."

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"Wild Dog crawled into the Cave and laid his head on the Woman’s lap… And the Woman said, 'His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend'.”

Just So Stories --  Rudyard Kipling.

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No, Dogs Aren't People... 

Salon...

Jason G Goldman, developmental psychologist, science writer, and blogger in the Scientific American (The Thoughtful Animal Blog), responded to a New York Times op-ed article that posited that dogs have emotions like humans. Here are excerpts from his thoughtful article entitled:  No, Dogs Aren't People  

"Are dogs really people? Gregory Berns seems to think so. On Sunday the New York Times ran an op-ed by Berns, a neuroeconomist and author, titled “Dogs Are People, Too.” But all the puppy-friendly Halloween costumes in the world can’t turn a dog into a person...

Perhaps domestication has allowed us to see a bit of ourselves in our canine companions. We made dogs
in our own image. We were so successful in domesticating dogs that they even outperform chimpanzees when it comes to understanding human social cues. Unlike other animals, dogs do not need their desired behaviors to be reinforced with food; praise from a human is reward enough. Given their unique place in human culture, it’s easy to see why we look into Fido’s eyes and see ourselves reflected back..."

The photos above, from PAL (People Animals Love), are clear examples of the canine connection, the bonding and caring between dogs and people, and the primary factor in our relationships with dogs. PAL works with therapy dogs to bring friendship and healing love to people of all ages. PAL posts this motto on their site..."HUMANS LEND A HELPING HAND, ANIMALS LEND A HELPING PAW"

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Click the link for a wonderful video smile for dog lovers, children and even those who are not dog lovers...How To Pick Out A Dog, wherin Harvey, a dog, creates his own myth.

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The  Literary Voice of the Brothers Grimm

Every book, whether written for children or adults, has a "voice". It may be, "See spot
run",  or "It was the best of times , it was the worst of times"; there is always a written
"voice". What voice did the Grimms use in their fairy tales? 

"The Grimms' fairy tales are not written in the language of real children, nor do they seek to evoke the sounds of childish speech. Rather, the Grimms synthesized folk stories, personal remembrances, and an already rich tradition of literary fairy tales (from those of Charles Perrault in the 1690s to those of Clemens Brentano in the earlly 1800s) to create a literary language akin to their sense of early language itself"...Seth Lerer,in his Children's Literature, A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter

 

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 The Castle and the huge surrounfing forests are covered in snow. Inside the castle are the kidnapped children. There will be war unless the dogs can free them.

Here is an excerpt from the review of Castle In The Mist by Ann
Staub on Pawsitively Pets..."The dogs lead the evil Prince on a hunt to capture them in an effort to save the kidnapped children. This part of the story is very exciting and has great suspense. It's fun to read about the dog's strategies in outsmarting the Prince's soldiers. As I'm sure you're all aware, dogs are very clever creatures and this book showcases their intelligence perfectly!...I'd recommend Castle In The Mist for children as well as adults. "

Read sample chapters of all the books in the Planet Of The Dogs series by clicking here: Books

Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore or via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's...

Librarians, teachers, bookstores...Order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount.

Therapy reading dog owners, librarians and teachers with therapy reading dog programs -- you can write us at barkingplanet@aol.com and we will send you free reader copies from the Planet of the Dogs Series...Read Dog Books to Dogs....Ask any therapy reading dog: "Do you like it when the kids read dog books to you?"

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The Canine Connection and Can Do Canines

We live in an era where many wonderful organizations, supported by volunteers, dedicated staff, and caring people are utilizing the canine connection and the special abilities of dogs to make an enormous difference in the lives of people with severe and often dangerous handicaps. 

What do you do if you are confined to a wheelchair and you are unable to open a door and retrieve a cordless phone?

Can you hear a smoke alarm, a doorbell, or a ringing phone?

Do you have an autistic child who may suddenly become excited and run into danger?

Do you know a diabetic who was alone, didn't know that their blood suger was low, and had a seizure?

Seizures can also come from epilepsy and other sources. 

Can Do Caninines help people with a variety of disabilities and handicaps. As an example: their Seizure Assist Dogs help people before, during, and after the seizure takes place. Dogs can warn when a seizure is coming. Dogs stay with a person who suffers a seizure attack, licking their face and comforting them while the person is recovering. The dog is trained to bring an emergency phone or to get help from another person. In addition, the dog can wear a backpack with pockets that hold medicine and medical alert information...for more information on these wonderful therapy service dogs, visit Can Do Canines. 

 

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The Kalevala...the Mythology of Finland

February 28 is Kalevala Day in Finland...Flags will fly from virtually every building and home... 

I wrote of the Kalevala in our last blog. This ancient tome contains the folk legends of Finland, passed on through the centuries in rhythmic verse  by rune singers ( story tellers). The Kalevala, when published in the mid-nineteenth century -- after 600 years of Swedish rule -- swept through Finnish consciousness, igniting feelings of national identity and a great flourishing in all the arts.

I have learned that there is now a Kalevala Children's game. 

Kalevala Children's Game...

There is also the wonderful children's book of the Kalevala, written and illustrated by Mauri Kunnis 

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No Books in New Library in Texas !

As reported in Galley Cat by Dianna Dilworth

"Bexar County, Texas has opened a new library that has no books inside. Instead the library is outfitted with iPad stations and iMacs loaded with digital books available to check out, making it the first digital library in the country..."                               Here is the link: BiblioTech

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DOGS for KIDS...Information from Way Cool Dogs

The Best Dog Breeds for Children: Which One Should You Choose?

"When it comes to choosing the best dog breeds for children, it’s no good simply
choosing the dog you think is cutest or the breed from their favorite film. Different dogs need different levels of care and attention, some dogs get more excitable than others, and some are more placid. You need to take everything about a dog breed into account before deciding that it’s right for your family and home life! We’ve compiled a list of the best dog breeds for children to help you get an idea of the kind of dogs you should be looking at..." Read on to learn more: Children

The illustration, by Stella Mustanoja McCarty, is from Planet Of The Dogs.

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Biscuit and Gravy

Thanks to Richard Bradley (A Rock In My Shoe), in our December Christmas blog, we have published photos of his dogs dressed for the holiday season. Alas, the dogs, Darcy and Caboose, have passed on but their holiday spirit remains.  Richard's new dogs, Biscuit and Gravy will carry on this tradition in our next December blog.

 

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A Book Of Enchantment

Maria Tatar's book, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, is beautiful.

The insights are equal to the wonderful array of illustrations in color by Edmund Burne-Jones, Gustave Dore, Arthur Rackham and seven others.

There are 26 annotated classic fairy and biographies of the authors.

This book is itself a classic. 

 

 

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Therapy Dog Uses Surfboard

The Human Canine Connection has infinite variations...

in this video, an Irish Setter named Ricochet,  , rides a surfboard and opens the door to self confidence and joy, for  children with disabilitiesyoung boys.

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       educating alice

Close Reading...Information and Insights 

 by Monica Edinger, dedicated 4th grade teacher, author, and children's book lover who writes from decades of caring experience ...Here is an excerpt:

"I’ve been curious about the attention now being paid to the skill of close reading, something I began doing with my 4th graders decades ago. Judiciously. By that, I mean I only do it enough for the children to see how much pleasure they can take in the experience, but not enough for it to become a chore. Frankly, some of the current suggestions I see for close reading concern me because they seem utilitarian in the extreme and leave out the joy that the experience can be..."

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Sunbear Squad posted the following Watch Tips for February

Urgent: Extreme cold kills outside tethered dogs and cats, especially those animals without heavy coats, the malnourished, the very young and the elderly. Tethered animals in southern regions are at higher risk for hypothermia because they have not grown heavier coats over time like they would have in cooler climates. Watch for animals that don't have adequate shelter; speak with owners or call the authorities immediately. It's important that the shelter be sited correctly also...

Read more at SunbearSquad

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" The dog was created especially for children. He is the god of frolic." Henry Ward Beecher

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January Legends Live On, Books, Kids and Dogs

 

 
        
 

The Kalevala contains the folk legends of Finland, passed on in rhythmic verse through the centuries by rune singers, story tellers. 

Kalevala Murals adorn the dome of the National Museum of Finland 

The oldest themes, which include the origin of Earth, have their roots in distant, unrecorded history and could be as old as 3,000 years.

Finland was emerging, when the Kalevala was first published in the nineteeth century , from 600 years of Swedish rule and domination.

The Kalevala swept through Finnish consciousness, igniting feelings of national identity and a great flourishing in all the arts. "For Finnish intelligentsia the Kalevala became the emblem of the nation’s past, nationality, language and culture; a foundation on which national identity was to be built."

The Kalevala was recorded by Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884), a doctor who traveled to the far reaches of Finland where the surviving rune singers could still be found. The Kalevala was first published by Lönnrot in 1835; a more complete version was published in 1849.The Kalevala has been translated into 61 languages. 

This is a detail from the museum dome murals painted by  Akseli Gallen-Kallela; he also painted the scene below of Kullervo.  

Tolkien and the Kalevala

 J.R.R.Tolkien, as a philologist and master of many arcane languages including Old Norse, Old Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon, and Middle English, also learned Finnish, enabling him to read the Kalevala.

"Tolkien was strongly influenced by Anglo-Saxon literature, Germanic and Norse mythologies, Finnish mythology, the Bible, and Greek mythology. The works most often cited as sources for Tolkien's stories include Beowulf, the Kalevala, the Poetic Edda, the Volsunga saga and the Hervarar saga1. Tolkien himself acknowledged Homer, Oedipus, and the Kalevala as influences or sources for some of his stories and ideas. His borrowings also came from numerous Middle English works and poems. " 

The stories of the Hobbit and Middle Earth are an amalgam comprised of Tolkien' s wonderful imagination, legends and folklore from many cultures. Here is an excerpt from one of his letters regarding the influence of the Kalevala:  "The germ of my attempt to write legends of my own to fit my private languages was the tragic tale of the hapless Kullervo in the Finnish Kalevala. It remains a major matter in the legends of the First Age (which I hope to publish as The Silmarillion)"― J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 257

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Movies and Children's Classics Reinvented

Smaug and Frozen are Hot

Peter Jackson's violence-laden Smaug, and Disney's sanitized --  but delightful -- version of The Snow Queen, Frozen, combined worldwide box office results have now passed the half billion dollar mark.

Jackson is a visionary and has brought Tolkien to multitudes that would otherwise never have ventured to middle earth. I hope this leads to more reading of his books.

I also hope that parents use discernment in not allowing young children to see The Desolation of Smaug...the combination of 3-D, intense Dolby sound, frightening fight scenes and a very long fierce dragon scene will not stimulate pleasant dreams for kiddies.

No one knows the scale of the cumulative effect of continued exposure to violence  on children...but how can it be other than scary and disturbing?

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The Hunger Games-- Catching Fire remains Hot

This dystopian sequel to the original Hunger Games has passed 838 million at the box office...few people have questioned the savage premise behind the films and the YA books by Suzanne Collins. Here is an excerpt from a more thoughtful review by Denver Post Film Critic, Lisa Kennedy...

 "...It's cruel. It's cynical. It makes great TV! 

Catching Fire delivers on the grim, roiling promises of the original. Lawrence and Hutcherson remain compelling as the District 12 denizens who continue to do a romantic minuet dictated by necessity but also authentic fondness.

Oscar-winning writers Simon Beaufoy ("Slumdog Millionaire") and Michael Arndt ("Little Miss Sunshine," credited here as Michael deBruyn) deepen the themes at the heart of Collins' novels: What are the differences between allies and friends? How does one trust not only others but also one's own feelings? Which adults can be confided in, and are there any institutions worth believing in?

It's heady stuff in a PG-13 film, albeit one that depicts the violence and coercive force of an oppressive regime..."

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Why are the Hunger Games so extremly popular? I can think of several reasons why these films are popular, but I don't understand why they are so extraordinarily popular.

There are other films with female heroines, dystopian futures, embattled good people valiantly surviving powerful evil oppressors. Why this one? I asked this question of one of my grandsons. He suggested that, "Perhaps it's because the Hunger Games films deal with the darkside, and these are difficult times we have been going through."

I'm hoping parents understand that there is an air of realism in the Hunger Games films not found in Disney or Miyazaki films.

There are unanswered questions about the effects of this dark fantasy on children wherein a teenage girl and her boyfriend must kill and destroy other people in sanctioned mayhem.

Hollywood decision makers, video game producers, and probably YA authors will no doubt continue to use violence for its own sake as a way to make money.

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"Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” 

- J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowsip of the Ring

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 The Children's Kalevala - an epic Dog Story

Mauri Kunnas, Finnish author and illustrator of many exceptional children's books has interpreted the Kalevala in a wonderful book, Canine Kalevala. The characters are played by dogs. It is unfortunate that this  gifted man is relatively unknown in the English speaking world. 

His other books in English translation include the story of the Vikings, Robin Hood, and The Story of Finnish Elves.

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There is no denying the fact: the American shelter system is broken...

by CA Wulff...Author, animal advocate, and voice for animal rescue...

"According to the Humane Society HSUS and the ASPCA, it is estimated that between 5-8 million animals enter the shelter system every year, and of those, about 60% of dogs and 70% of cats are killed.

That’s in spite of all the people in animal rescue who work every day to save lives. It’s such a huge problem that there are multiple focuses to try to save as many pets as possible. There are rescues that pull pets from shelters, transporters that move pets from places where they will likely die to places where they have a better chance of being adopted, networkers who share urgent animals on social media, groups that help stray pets find their way back to their families, everybody is working toward a common goal: save lives. So why is there so much divisiveness when it comes to shelter reform?..." 

Barking Planet Productions is proud to publish her excellent books; here is a  link: CA Wulff

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 The Tea Fan Blog...I was surprised to find a comprehensive, appreciative, and personal

Kalevala post on a blog written by a young woman named Jenner Sharp with a sweeping mind and great curiosity...Here are excerpts from her description of herself...

"I am currently applying to college for bassoon performance, music composition, and English writing. I’m not very interested in things that make money, hence the majors... I play four instruments: the piano, the violin, the flute, and the bassoon.  I am fascinated by the human race and how the human mind works.  I frequently obsess over Vermont, Oregon, Iceland, Jane Austen, The Hunger Games, and the sound of rain"...

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FSD-Freedom Service Dogs" is a nonprofit organization that enhances the lives of people with disabilities by rescuing dogs and custom training them for individual client needs. Clients include children, veterans and active duty soldiers, and other adults. Their disabilities include Autism, Traumatic Brain Injury, Cerebral Palsy, Spinal Cord Injuries, Muscular Dystrophy, Multiple Sclerosis, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)."

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 Life, Interrupted: By a Dog

by Suleika Jaouad (pronounced su-LAKE-uh ja-WAD) is a 25-year-old writer who lives in New York City. Her column, “Life, Interrupted,” chronicling her experiences as a young woman with cancer, appears regularly on Well in the New York Times..Here are excerpts from a recent post:

"Ever since a therapy dog visited me in the hospital during my first cycle of chemotherapy in May 2011, I became fixated on the idea of having a dog of my own one day.

When you are talking to a dog about cancer, there are no judgments or taboos. The therapy dog, a small energetic King Charles Spaniel, jumped around on my hospital bed playfully tugging at the blanket on my lap. For the first time since I had fallen ill, I didn’t feel like I was being treated as if I were made of porcelain. The therapy dog made me feel like a human first, and a cancer patient second..."

 Here is a link, Life, Interrupted, to read this and other articles written for Well by Suleika Jaoud 

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"This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof"...Neil Gaiman

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Out in space, on the other side of the sun, is the  Planet of the Dogs®..

 

Dogs have always lived there in peace and happiness.

Long ago there were no dogs on Planet Earth.

There came a time when peaceful lives were being disrupted...Invaders threatened Green Valley... Children were kidnapped and taken to the Castle in the Mist… two of Santa’s reindeer were kidnapped and there would be no Christmas.

The Planet Of The Dogs series tells of how dogs came down to earth to help bring peace, to teach people about love, loyalty, and courage – and to save Christmas.

The illustration is from Planet Of TheDogs

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Click here for Sample Chapters of the Planet Of The Dogs series 

Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore or via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's...

Librarians, teachers, bookstores...Order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount.

Therapy reading dog owners, librarians and teachers with therapy reading dog programs -- you can write us at barkingplanet@aol.com and we will send you free reader copies from the Planet of the Dogs Series...Read Dog Books to Dogs....Ask any therapy reading dog: "Do you like it when the kids read dog books to you?"

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Good News! The Little Prince Returns to New York ...January 24, 2014 to April 27 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's original manuscript and illustrations for the Little Prince, as well as letters and artifacts will be exhibited at the Morgan Library & Museum. It sounds terrific.   Here are excerpts from their website :

"Since its publication seventy years ago, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince has captivated millions of readers throughout the world. It may come as a surprise that this French tale of an interstellar traveler who comes to Earth in search of friendship and understanding was written and first published in New York City, during the two years the author spent here at the height of the Second World War. 

As he prepared to leave the city to rejoin the war effort as a reconnaissance pilot, Saint-Exupéry appeared at his friend Sylvia Hamilton's door wearing his military uniform. "I'd like to give you something splendid," he said, "but this is all I have." He tossed a rumpled paper bag onto her entryway table. Inside were the manuscript and drawings for The Little Prince, which the Morgan acquired from her in 1968..."

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"Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.” 
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

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Know About These 5 Essential Nutrients for Healthy Dogs

Here is an excerpt from a recent article on Way Cool Dogs, the website with ongoing proven advice, information, and insights for dog lovers

Keeping your dog happy and healthy can be daunting. After all, you control his diet and you want to make sure he’s getting all the nutrients he needs. Every person requires a different diet, depending on his or her body composition and health. The same intricacies apply to your four-legged companion, except he doesn’t understand 

Read more: Nutrition for Dogs

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Do Legends Live on with the same power on the Internet as they do in Reading Books? 

In the New York Times, author David Mikis wrote a lucid and thought provoking Op Ed Article,  In Praise of (Offline) Slow Reading 

Here are two excerpts..."The digital world offers us many advantages, but if we yield to that world too completely we may lose the privacy we need to develop a self. Activities that require time and careful attention, like serious reading, are at risk; we read less and skim more as the Internet occupies more of our lives. And there’s a link between selfhood and reading slowly, rather than scanning for quick information, as the Web encourages us to do. Recent work in sociology and psychology suggests that reading books, a private experience, is an important aspect of coming to know who we are...
"After all the Internet’s many diversions, people still yearn for the solitary refuge of reading, since a book provides a space for reflection, a private therapy that is hard to find online. Most of us remember from childhood the experience of being head-over-heels in a book, utterly absorbed. We entered into a strange, enchanted world and traveled with an author’s characters; we lived their lives with them. There’s nothing in the online world that can fulfill the promise that we get in a work of fiction to give us a sustained picture of the self..."

David Mikics is the author, most recently, of “Slow Reading in a Hurried Age.”

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From Children's Librarian, Elizabeth Bird..."New York Public Library's Children's Literary Salon is pleased to announce our upcoming program on Saturday, February 1st at 2:00 p.m.  in the South Court Auditorium:

This Censorious World: Books for Children and Their Challenges                                          Join the National Coalition Against Censorship and special guests Robie H. Harris, Liz Levy Charlotte Jones Voiklis, Leonard Marcus and Joan Bertin (NCAC Executive Director) for a discussion of children's literature and the challenges it has faced in both the past and the present.
 For further information, questions, or comments, please respond to Betsy Bird at elizabethbird@bookops.org."
 
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 Mary Poppins

If you are a Mary Poppins fan, this interview --

Not Quite All Spoonfuls of Sugar -- from the New York Times is most interesting.

M.L. Travers, the author, was a tortured soul who wrote a children's classic. After years of resistance, she allowed the book to be made into an upbeat Disney film. In this interview, the actors discuss, with candor, the motivations and character of both Walt Disney and M.L. Travers. Both Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks had conducted extensive background and character research for the film Saving Mr Banks...here is the excellent trailer: Saving Mr Banks.

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Toad, Mole and Badger Leap to a Bigger Stage
The Wind in the Willows, Danced in London

In her enthusiastic New York Times review, ROSLYN SULCAS describes a new dance based interpretation of Kenneth Grahame's classic story...here are excerpts... 

“ 'Let my creatures live again,' says the narrator at the start of Will Tuckett’s stage adaptation of “The Wind in the Willows,” the children’s book by Kenneth Grahame that has been beloved here almost since it was first published in 1908...

Mr. Tuckett’s “The Wind in the Willows” isn’t primarily a dance piece, even though the principal characters are played by dancers and their movements are all choreographed. Its real focus is the picturesque language spoken by the narrator (Tony Robinson) who plays Grahame, conjuring these characters and the pastoral world that is perhaps a last moment of English cultural innocence before the onslaught of the Great War...

The idea permeating the poet Andrew Motion’s lively adaptation of Grahame’s text is one that informs all of literature: The words we read or hear are fodder for our imagination, as we flesh out and create our own images of, and ideas about, the tales we are told"...

Here is a link to a video for the production, playing until Feb 1, 2014, at the West End's Duchess Theater.

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Also on the London Stage...

Peter Pan by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Maria Tatar was  quoted extensively by BBC News in an article by Vincent Dowd entitled "Why did theatre turn its back on original Peter Pan?", referring to the latest RSC  production of a heavily revised version of Peter Pan.

Here are excerpts from her insightful analysis.

"It goes back to the Brothers Grimm and beyond: stories which persist in the collective unconscious often have a darkness underneath." 

"Peter Pan has the same basic narrative that so many great children's classics share. The protagonists are often orphans: if possible, you kill off the parents on page one or the author finds some other way to push them to one side. "Think of the Narnia books or The Wizard of Oz. Think of Harry Potter or some of the works of E Nesbit. The children have to overcome harsh realities and meet terrible monsters or whatever. Young readers are enthralled...

...You can change anything else in the story but even the most radical new version of Peter Pan would need to preserve two things. There's the idea of the children learning to cope without parents - that's the heart of the book and without it there's no story.

"And it would be a very brave director who did away with all the flying. Last year I went to an American version of Peter Pan which in some ways was a little flat and disappointing. But the moment Peter flew out above our heads, the entire theatre was in raptures."

Maria Tatar is the author of many  highly regarded books on children's literature; she chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, where she teaches multiple courses. 

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 The poster above was from the original stage production of Peter Pan in 1904. Here are  Professor Seth Lerer's insightful comments on the play excerpted from his reader's history of Children's Literature...

"...Peter Pan is a play that looks back to a lost age of Victorian security. It seeks a meaning in fantastic rather than empirical or scientific life. It sees life as theatrical and performative, rather than as authentic and sincere. It exposes the conventions of social life as conventions, and in the process calls attention to the gap betweem morality and propriety... 

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Goodreads membership has nearly doubled in the last year to 25 million...

What does this mean..?

More readers?

More joiners?

More Amazon?

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Ottawa Therapy Dogs 

Once again, I find myself somewhat awed by the generous spirited and caring dog owners and organizations that are helping children and adults of all ages. The following is from the website of this excellent Canadian oganization...

"...Therapy dogs  work with a handler to provide programs and services that improve clients’ physical, emotional and communication abilities. Humans and animals share a powerful bond. That bond can be a source of comfort, peace and relief for those who suffer from physical or emotional pain. 

Therapy dogs can sometimes achieve results when other therapies have failed. Some of the healing benefits of therapy dogs include reducing blood pressure, anxiety, stress, and loneliness. Our teams regularly visit more than 60 health care and social services facilities throughout the National Capital region and surrounding communities.  You can also find therapy dogs in local schools with the R.E.A.D. program, which helps children deal with reading challenges.

Ottawa Therapy Dogs have made an excellent video about R.E.A.D...kids, volunteers, teachers, and librarians are all seen in a montage that shows the actual process and benefits of reading with therapy dogs.   

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Dogs and Cats. ..

a video smile...You Shall Not Pass, Dog...

 

 

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Who are these dogs? ...They are carrying on a Barking Planet tradition...explanation next month...

 

 

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 A dog is lying by the side of the road...What do I do? What are my options? I want to be helpful, but this is all new to me... For answers, examples, true stories and more, visit Sunbear Squad...Let the experience of compassionate dog lovers guide you. Here's the Link: SunbearSquad  - - 

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''If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."         Albert Einstein - 

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Tis the Season... Kids, Books and Dogs...

 

 

                          
     
Happy Holidays to all...

And a special greeting to the therapy dog owners and therapy and service dog organizations who make this world a better place...and to everyone who believes in the importance of reading and children's literature.

Here at Barking Planet, I continue to be awed by and grateful to the dog lovers and their dogs who help so many people, of all ages, in so many ways.

Dogs have a unique quality that helps people heal, release fear, and find joy. When you think about the blessings that dogs bring to people's lives, especially therapy and service dogs, it boggles the mind.

Happy Holidays...a nd may 2013 be a good year for all. 

  Note:Thanks to Richard Bradley for the photo. Every year at this time we post a photo from Richard's  Blog, A Rock in My Shoe. The dogs, Darcy and Caboose, have passed on but their holiday spirit remains. More on Richard's blog and his new puppies in January.

-   .............................

“One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.” 

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

..............................

The legend of Santa Claus was greatly enhanced by the poem, A Visit from St Nicholas, written for his children, by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823...here is an excerpt with a Christmas illustration by the extrordinary Arthur Rackham 

"When, what to to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
with a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call'd them by name:
"Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer, and Vixen!
"On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donder and Blitzen!

"To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
"Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew..."

 

......................................

 "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten"...Neil Gaiman

.......................................... 

If you have any doubts that there was once a time, long ago, when the unthinkable happened and there was to be no more Christmas, click this link...Interview with Santa

........................................... 

 Paws Giving Independence (PGI) means a better Christmas

and a better life for people and dogs in Peoria,Illinois.This heartfelt operation is helping children and adults with disabilities, including autism and cerebral palsy.They have  rescued 50 dogs, have 19 in training, and received a 2013 PDF(Planet Dog Foundation)Grant.

Three Women...

PGI was started 5 years ago by Donna Kosner, a third grade teacher, her daughter, Michelle, a physical therapist, and her daughter's best friend, Brandi, an ER nurse. Donna sent me the following information about Payton, a therapy dog trained by Michelle... 

Payton...

"Payton goes to work with Michelle at Easter Seals every day and works with the physical therapists, an occupational therapist, and speech therapists on a daily basis.  He actually has a list of his own patients. Michelle started the animal assisted therapy program at Easter Seals. Having been diagnosed at 3 with juvenile arthritis, and having been through physical therapy for many years, Michelle felt that animals would make therapy much more fun for the kids.  

Some children have taken their first steps with Payton or talked for the first time to Payton.(his photo is on the left)  Michelle tells some amazing stories of what the love of a dog can do for a child.  The one thing we see with all the dogs we place is that they really bridge the gap between the people with disabilities and the non disabled population. One of our recipients said people would always look at her wheelchair first and not know if they should talk to her, now they see the dog before the chair..."  

Here is the  heartwarming video about PGI's Payton,the dog who brings Joy from sadness.                 The photo above is of Michael and his PGI sevice dog, Duncan.

..........................................

Huge Holiday Movie Audiences for films derived from children's and young adult literature are breaking records...here is the link to Disney's trailer for FROZEN , inspired by, but quite different from Hans Christian Anderson's Snow Queen...88% of the reviews for Frozen have been favorable...

..............

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire continues to draw a huge audience worldwide with over 700 million dollars ticket sales... here is a link to the exciting official trailer: Catching Fire...the majority of the reviews (75%) were favorable. However, questions are being raised about the dark side of this movie. Here is an excerpt from David Denby's review in the New Yorker:

 "Yet rebellion is breaking out in the twelve districts of the country, called Panem, and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and his new head gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), cook up a fresh scheme: they will choose among the survivors of all the competitions, some of them now middle-aged or elderly, and throw them into a new struggle, which will somehow quell the rebellion. Distraction is supposed to work miracles. Along with this gang of heavies, Katniss and Peeta are pushed back into the woods to fight again." ...

Once again, a teenage girl and her boyfriend must kill and destroy other people in sanctioned mayhem. I'm hoping parents understand that there is an air of realism in the Hunger Games films not found in Disney or Miyazaki films. There are unanswered questions about the effects of this dark fantasy on children.

............

Tolkien returns with The Desolation of Smaug...Now going into world wide release, the latest Peter Jackson movie, derived from Tolkien's classics, is expected to continue the great success of its predecessors. Here is the link to the trailer and an enthusiastic review from Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian: Smaug.

Here is an excerpt from Bradshaw's review: "This second Hobbit movie was for me not just a pleasure, but a revelation. For the first time, I "got" the JRR Tolkien/Peter Jackson experience. I tuned into the frequency. I tasted the fusion cuisine. I heard the eccentric but weirdly rousing choral harmonies. And this is despite – or more probably because of – never having been a Tolkien fan and being agnostic about the myth-making and, indeed, the prose quality. I never had any dogmatic sense of how the original should be represented or any loyalty to childhood fandom, and in fact I came to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001 with some unbelief, though as the Rings series progressed I was forced – with some churlish ill-grace – to admire those movies' mighty ambition and scope. With the Hobbit series, the penny is properly dropping: it's not about Tolkien, it's Tolkien-plus-Jackson, of course. It's morphed into something new."

My Question: At what age can a child handle the violence that Peter Jackson adds to his film versions of the Tolkien literary legacy?

..............................

 

80 percent of the pre-schools and after school programs serving children in need do not have a single book for the children they serve.
In some of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the country there is only one book available for every 300 children. 
This disturbing information comes from First Book.
...........................................

                


To Read Sample Chapters of Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, Click here: Christmas Books

Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore or via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's...

Librarians, teachers, bookstores...Order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount.

Therapy reading dog owners, librarians and teachers with therapy reading dog programs -- you can write us at barkingplanet@aol.com and we will send you free reader copies from the Planet of the Dogs Series...Read Dog Books to Dogs....Ask any therapy reading dog: "Do you like it when the kids read dog books to you?"

And for the First Time -- ebooks of the Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale are  now available  on KDP select....      

........................................

" Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home"...     Charles Dickens

...................

PAL

 See the people, see the dogs, see the human-canine connection....see this documentary from People Animals Love (PAL)... over 320 volunteers and their dogs go out into the community in Washington, DC, and the surrounding area visiting nursing homes, mental health facilities, hospitals, libraries and schools...wagging tails bring good cheer.

.......................

Good Books for Kids is an outstanding resource for kid's book reviews
and information --- including reading levels. The following is from their site:

"The books mentioned on this site are handpicked by the staff which consists of Don, a teacher and grandparent, Shan, mom and children's librarian, and Pam, book lover, education nerd, and mom of two. Unlike other sites which only review new books, we spend a great deal of our time finding older books that are worthy of your considerati on."

This is an unsolicited recommendation.

........................

CA Wulff, author and animal rights advocate sent us this information about shelter reform... #NoKillMondays

AnimalsVote.org in their quest for shelter reform,  has begun a campaign for December called #NoKillMondays. They have asked 2,500 kill shelters across the United States to stop killing for one day per week. The advocates of AnimalsVote believe that behind each cage door is a loving soul only asking for a second chance. 
 
Becca Riker, the founder of Cleveland’s Secondhand Mutts, adopted her dog Jimmy Dean ( photos above and on the left) from Mahoning County Animal Control. Jimmy Dean was an 8 year old Doberman Pinscher saved from death row, who became a certified Canine Good Citizen and got his Therapy Dogs International Certification.  Riker and Jimmy Dean joined Thera-Pits, an organization serving the Greater Cleveland community by taking therapy dogs to schools and hospitals. Many of the dogs in Thera-Pits are former shelter dogs who were afforded that second chance.

AnimalsVote.org asks that you support #NoKillMondays and help keep tails wagging. Please follow their campaign on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

..........................
Peter Pan on stage in London...From Maria Tatar's                                    Breezes From Wonderland  comes this news of the Royal Shakespere's reinterpretation of Wendy and Peter Pan...
 
"In J.M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan, Wendy spends a good deal of time darning socks and telling stories.  She recreates home, with all its hostility to disorder and unruliness, in Neverland.  The Royal Shakespeare Company seems to be re-imagining Wendy in great new ways.  I wish I could have included this version in Annotated Peter Pan."
..............
 

Print Books Preferred by YA in the UK

The majority (62 percent) of 16-to-24 year-olds in the UK prefer print books to eBooks, according to a new report report from Voxburner. The report included responses from 1,420 participants who were surveyed between September 25th and October 18th 2013. 

"The main reasons that the respondents prefer print are that print books are a good value, and that readers have an emotional connection to books..."

......................................

 

 

   

 

 

                     

New Reviews of Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale by Ann Staub for Pawsitively Pets and Caren Gittleman for Dakota's Den Here are excerpts...   

"Snow Valley Heroes would be perfect to read aloud to younger children during the holiday season. Grade school and middle school aged children will enjoy reading this fantasy chapter book alone. It has a lot of action and will leave your kids on the edge of their seat, ready to read more. Of course, the book is also a good read for adults. I really enjoyed it and it put me in the holiday spirit."                               reviewed b y Ann Staub.

 

"Looking for a great bedtime story for your elementary school child  (that you can stretch out to include ALL TWELVE days of Christmas?), or are you looking for a Christmas tale with a lesson for your Middle School child to read on his or her own? Look no more! Your nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, grandchildren, will all enjoy Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, Planet of the Dogs Volume 3."  reviewed by Caren Gittleman

.........................................

The Hunger Games,Catching Fire is breaking box office records...but have you seen the Sesame Street Parody?

Here is the link to The Hungry Games, Catching Fur.

.............................

 Amazing Holiday Video...

Moving light patterns on darkened Scottish hills as border collies move sheep through amazing patterns...LED lights create a lovely surreal world that would stop a traveler in their tracks.  

.................................

 

It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

Dr Seuss -- How The Grinch Stole Christmas

................................

Losing Lassie - A Pet's End of Life Care

When your pet is reaching the end of her life, it is much like losing a close family member. A pet’s end of life care is mixed with terrible grief and hardship. You want to make sure that you and your pet both make it through the process with as much dignity and love as...                                                   Read more: Losing Lassie

..........................

Bringing literacy to the world...

LitWorld has initiated Innovation Hubs in Harlem, NYC, USA, Kibera*, Kenya, Manila, the Philippines, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Here is an excerpt from their website...

"LitWorld Innovation Hubs center our resources in local communities where we engage in deep and strong partnerships, working together to improve outcomes in literacy, personal empowerment, and inter-generational leadership and civic engagement around reading and writing. 

The Hubs provide versatile learning spaces for children and young adults as well as their families, support LitWorld’s educational programming, and offer lending libraries, providing community members with comprehensive access to high quality texts that inspire them to read more regularly. Our hubs offer community members of all ages extensive leadership training, and real opportunities to practice and refine their these capabilities."  

*I looked up Kibera on the Internet. I had not heard of it. Here is what I read:

There are approx 2.5 million slum dwellers in about 200 settlements in Nairobi representing 60% of the Nairobi population, occupying just 6% of the land. Kibera houses almost 1 million of these people. Kibera is the biggest slum in Africa and one of the biggest in the world.

One more reason to salute and support Lit World!

..........................

 "Snow Valley Heroes has the potential of becoming a favorite holiday story for both children and adults." -- Wayne Walker, Stories fof Children Magazine, Home School Buzz, Home School Book Review 

Read sample chapters: Snow Valley Heroes 

 

 

...............................

New York Public Library... The Children's Literary Salon is pleased to announce our January program on Saturday, January 4th at 2:00 p.m.

Common Core and Other Delightful Happenstances

Do the words "Common Core" cause you to shiver to the marrow of your bones?  Excise your demons with this charming panel of CCSS experts as they pick apart nonfiction, picture books, apps, and everything in between.  A talk with Marcie Colleen, Picture Book Month's Education Consultant, Daryl Grabarek, editor of SLJ's Curriculum Connections, and Amie Wright, the Joint Library School Pilot Selection Program Supervisor of BookOps.  

 

This event will be held in the Berger Forum on the second floor of the main branch of NYPL. Children's Literary Salons are free and available to the public.  RSVPs are not necessary.  For additional concerns and questions, please contact Betsy Bird at elizabethbird@bookops.org

.......................................................................
Sunbear Squad Reminder for the Month of December:

"When attending holiday gatherings that include pets, be observant and proactive. Remember that parties can become very stressful for resident and visiting pets, especially when active, curious, pet-loving children are present. Take on the responsibility of watching over pets and children and be prepared to intervene when you see pets under stress, to help prevent bites or scratches." 

 .....................................

 “One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us... By their delight in being with us, the reliable sunniness of their disposition, the joy they bring to playtime, the curiosity with which they embrace each new experience, dogs can melt cynicism, and sweeten the bitter heart.” 
― Dean Koontz, A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog

December Tis the Season... Kids, Books and Dogs...

 

 

                          
     
Happy Holidays to all...

And a special greeting to the therapy dog owners and therapy and service dog organizations who make this world a better place...and to everyone who believes in the importance of reading and children's literature.

Here at Barking Planet, I continue to be awed by and grateful to the dog lovers and their dogs who help so many people, of all ages, in so many ways.

Dogs have a unique quality that helps people heal, release fear, and find joy. When you think about the blessings that dogs bring to people's lives, especially therapy and service dogs, it boggles the mind.

Happy Holidays...a nd may 2013 be a good year for all. 

  Note:Thanks to Richard Bradley for the photo. Every year at this time we post a photo from Richard's  Blog, A Rock in My Shoe. The dogs, Darcy and Caboose, have passed on but their holiday spirit remains. More on Richard's blog and his new puppies in January.

-   .............................

“One can never have enough socks," said Dumbledore. "Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.” 

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

..............................

The legend of Santa Claus was greatly enhanced by the poem, A Visit from St Nicholas, written for his children, by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823...here is an excerpt with a Christmas illustration by the extrordinary Arthur Rackham 

"When, what to to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
with a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call'd them by name:
"Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer, and Vixen!
"On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donder and Blitzen!

"To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
"Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew..."

 

......................................

 "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten"...Neil Gaiman

.......................................... 

If you have any doubts that there was once a time, long ago, when the unthinkable happened and there was to be no more Christmas, click this link...Interview with Santa

........................................... 

 Paws Giving Independence (PGI) means a better Christmas

and a better life for people and dogs in Peoria,Illinois.This heartfelt operation is helping children and adults with disabilities, including autism and cerebral palsy.They have  rescued 50 dogs, have 19 in training, and received a 2013 PDF(Planet Dog Foundation)Grant.

Three Women...

PGI was started 5 years ago by Donna Kosner, a third grade teacher, her daughter, Michelle, a physical therapist, and her daughter's best friend, Brandi, an ER nurse. Donna sent me the following information about Payton, a therapy dog trained by Michelle... 

Payton...

"Payton goes to work with Michelle at Easter Seals every day and works with the physical therapists, an occupational therapist, and speech therapists on a daily basis.  He actually has a list of his own patients. Michelle started the animal assisted therapy program at Easter Seals. Having been diagnosed at 3 with juvenile arthritis, and having been through physical therapy for many years, Michelle felt that animals would make therapy much more fun for the kids.  

Some children have taken their first steps with Payton or talked for the first time to Payton.(his photo is on the left)  Michelle tells some amazing stories of what the love of a dog can do for a child.  The one thing we see with all the dogs we place is that they really bridge the gap between the people with disabilities and the non disabled population. One of our recipients said people would always look at her wheelchair first and not know if they should talk to her, now they see the dog before the chair..."  

Here is the  heartwarming video about PGI's Payton,the dog who brings Joy from sadness.                 The photo above is of Michael and his PGI sevice dog, Duncan.

..........................................

Huge Holiday Movie Audiences for films derived from children's and young adult literature are breaking records...here is the link to Disney's trailer for FROZEN , inspired by, but quite different from Hans Christian Anderson's Snow Queen...88% of the reviews for Frozen have been favorable...

..............

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire continues to draw a huge audience worldwide with over 700 million dollars ticket sales... here is a link to the exciting official trailer: Catching Fire...the majority of the reviews (75%) were favorable. However, questions are being raised about the dark side of this movie. Here is an excerpt from David Denby's review in the New Yorker:

 "Yet rebellion is breaking out in the twelve districts of the country, called Panem, and President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and his new head gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), cook up a fresh scheme: they will choose among the survivors of all the competitions, some of them now middle-aged or elderly, and throw them into a new struggle, which will somehow quell the rebellion. Distraction is supposed to work miracles. Along with this gang of heavies, Katniss and Peeta are pushed back into the woods to fight again." ...

Once again, a teenage girl and her boyfriend must kill and destroy other people in sanctioned mayhem. I'm hoping parents understand that there is an air of realism in the Hunger Games films not found in Disney or Miyazaki films. There are unanswered questions about the effects of this dark fantasy on children.

............

Tolkien returns with The Desolation of Smaug...Now going into world wide release, the latest Peter Jackson movie, derived from Tolkien's classics, is expected to continue the great success of its predecessors. Here is the link to the trailer and an enthusiastic review from Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian: Smaug.

Here is an excerpt from Bradshaw's review: "This second Hobbit movie was for me not just a pleasure, but a revelation. For the first time, I "got" the JRR Tolkien/Peter Jackson experience. I tuned into the frequency. I tasted the fusion cuisine. I heard the eccentric but weirdly rousing choral harmonies. And this is despite – or more probably because of – never having been a Tolkien fan and being agnostic about the myth-making and, indeed, the prose quality. I never had any dogmatic sense of how the original should be represented or any loyalty to childhood fandom, and in fact I came to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001 with some unbelief, though as the Rings series progressed I was forced – with some churlish ill-grace – to admire those movies' mighty ambition and scope. With the Hobbit series, the penny is properly dropping: it's not about Tolkien, it's Tolkien-plus-Jackson, of course. It's morphed into something new."

My Question: At what age can a child handle the violence that Peter Jackson adds to his film versions of the Tolkien literary legacy?

..............................

 

80 percent of the pre-schools and after school programs serving children in need do not have a single book for the children they serve.
In some of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the country there is only one book available for every 300 children. 
This disturbing information comes from First Book.
...........................................

                


To Read Sample Chapters of Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, Click here: Christmas Books

Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore or via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's...

Librarians, teachers, bookstores...Order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount.

Therapy reading dog owners, librarians and teachers with therapy reading dog programs -- you can write us at barkingplanet@aol.com and we will send you free reader copies from the Planet of the Dogs Series...Read Dog Books to Dogs....Ask any therapy reading dog: "Do you like it when the kids read dog books to you?"

And for the First Time -- ebooks of the Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale are  now available  on KDP select....      

........................................

" Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home"...     Charles Dickens

...................

PAL

 See the people, see the dogs, see the human-canine connection....see this documentary from People Animals Love (PAL)... over 320 volunteers and their dogs go out into the community in Washington, DC, and the surrounding area visiting nursing homes, mental health facilities, hospitals, libraries and schools...wagging tails bring good cheer.

.......................

Good Books for Kids is an outstanding resource for kid's book reviews
and information --- including reading levels. The following is from their site:

"The books mentioned on this site are handpicked by the staff which consists of Don, a teacher and grandparent, Shan, mom and children's librarian, and Pam, book lover, education nerd, and mom of two. Unlike other sites which only review new books, we spend a great deal of our time finding older books that are worthy of your considerati on."

This is an unsolicited recommendation.

........................

CA Wulff, author and animal rights advocate sent us this information about shelter reform... #NoKillMondays

AnimalsVote.org in their quest for shelter reform,  has begun a campaign for December called #NoKillMondays. They have asked 2,500 kill shelters across the United States to stop killing for one day per week. The advocates of AnimalsVote believe that behind each cage door is a loving soul only asking for a second chance. 
 
Becca Riker, the founder of Cleveland’s Secondhand Mutts, adopted her dog Jimmy Dean ( photos above and on the left) from Mahoning County Animal Control. Jimmy Dean was an 8 year old Doberman Pinscher saved from death row, who became a certified Canine Good Citizen and got his Therapy Dogs International Certification.  Riker and Jimmy Dean joined Thera-Pits, an organization serving the Greater Cleveland community by taking therapy dogs to schools and hospitals. Many of the dogs in Thera-Pits are former shelter dogs who were afforded that second chance.

AnimalsVote.org asks that you support #NoKillMondays and help keep tails wagging. Please follow their campaign on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

..........................
Peter Pan on stage in London...From Maria Tatar's                                    Breezes From Wonderland  comes this news of the Royal Shakespere's reinterpretation of Wendy and Peter Pan...
 
"In J.M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan, Wendy spends a good deal of time darning socks and telling stories.  She recreates home, with all its hostility to disorder and unruliness, in Neverland.  The Royal Shakespeare Company seems to be re-imagining Wendy in great new ways.  I wish I could have included this version in Annotated Peter Pan."
..............
 

Print Books Preferred by YA in the UK

The majority (62 percent) of 16-to-24 year-olds in the UK prefer print books to eBooks, according to a new report report from Voxburner. The report included responses from 1,420 participants who were surveyed between September 25th and October 18th 2013. 

"The main reasons that the respondents prefer print are that print books are a good value, and that readers have an emotional connection to books..."

......................................

 

 

   

 

 

                     

New Reviews of Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale by Ann Staub for Pawsitively Pets and Caren Gittleman for Dakota's Den Here are excerpts...   

"Snow Valley Heroes would be perfect to read aloud to younger children during the holiday season. Grade school and middle school aged children will enjoy reading this fantasy chapter book alone. It has a lot of action and will leave your kids on the edge of their seat, ready to read more. Of course, the book is also a good read for adults. I really enjoyed it and it put me in the holiday spirit."                               reviewed b y Ann Staub.

 

"Looking for a great bedtime story for your elementary school child  (that you can stretch out to include ALL TWELVE days of Christmas?), or are you looking for a Christmas tale with a lesson for your Middle School child to read on his or her own? Look no more! Your nieces, nephews, sons, daughters, grandchildren, will all enjoy Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, Planet of the Dogs Volume 3."  reviewed by Caren Gittleman

.........................................

The Hunger Games,Catching Fire is breaking box office records...but have you seen the Sesame Street Parody?

Here is the link to The Hungry Games, Catching Fur.

.............................

 Amazing Holiday Video...

Moving light patterns on darkened Scottish hills as border collies move sheep through amazing patterns...LED lights create a lovely surreal world that would stop a traveler in their tracks.  

.................................

 

It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

Dr Seuss -- How The Grinch Stole Christmas

................................

Losing Lassie - A Pet's End of Life Care

When your pet is reaching the end of her life, it is much like losing a close family member. A pet’s end of life care is mixed with terrible grief and hardship. You want to make sure that you and your pet both make it through the process with as much dignity and love as...                                                   Read more: Losing Lassie

..........................

Bringing literacy to the world...

LitWorld has initiated Innovation Hubs in Harlem, NYC, USA, Kibera*, Kenya, Manila, the Philippines, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Here is an excerpt from their website...

"LitWorld Innovation Hubs center our resources in local communities where we engage in deep and strong partnerships, working together to improve outcomes in literacy, personal empowerment, and inter-generational leadership and civic engagement around reading and writing. 

The Hubs provide versatile learning spaces for children and young adults as well as their families, support LitWorld’s educational programming, and offer lending libraries, providing community members with comprehensive access to high quality texts that inspire them to read more regularly. Our hubs offer community members of all ages extensive leadership training, and real opportunities to practice and refine their these capabilities."  

*I looked up Kibera on the Internet. I had not heard of it. Here is what I read:

There are approx 2.5 million slum dwellers in about 200 settlements in Nairobi representing 60% of the Nairobi population, occupying just 6% of the land. Kibera houses almost 1 million of these people. Kibera is the biggest slum in Africa and one of the biggest in the world.

One more reason to salute and support Lit World!

..........................

 "Snow Valley Heroes has the potential of becoming a favorite holiday story for both children and adults." -- Wayne Walker, Stories fof Children Magazine, Home School Buzz, Home School Book Review 

Read sample chapters: Snow Valley Heroes 

 

................................

Sunbear Squad Reminder for the Month of December:

"When attending holiday gatherings that include pets, be observant and proactive. Remember that parties can become very stressful for resident and visiting pets, especially when active, curious, pet-loving children are present. Take on the responsibility of watching over pets and children and be prepared to intervene when you see pets under stress, to help prevent bites or scratches." 

 .....................................

 “One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us... By their delight in being with us, the reliable sunniness of their disposition, the joy they bring to playtime, the curiosity with which they embrace each new experience, dogs can melt cynicism, and sweeten the bitter heart.” 
― Dean Koontz, A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog

November Dreaming Books, Kids and Dogs

                                    

Folklore is filled with legends and fairy tales...

Sleeping Beauty was written by Charles Perrault in the 17th century. It leaps from the light of goodness and beauty to darkness and violence. This is especially true in the second half of Perrault's tale which tells -- in addition to the well known traditional version -- the prolonged nightmare story of what happens after Princess Aurora wakes up. The Grimm Brothers revised the tale as Briar Rose, deleting the entire second half of Perrault's tale. Apparently, the original story was too dark even for them as it involved attempts at cannibalism, a most evil queen, and the ultimate in treachery and deceit.

In both versions, the beautiful sleeping princess is awakened by a noble prince after 100 years of a witch's curse.

What were Sleeping Beauty's dreams? Perrault wrote that she had "agreeable dreams."  Here is an excerpt from Perrault's version of the story:  

"And now, as the enchantment was at an end, the Princess awaked and looking on him with eyes more tender than the first view might seem to admit of:

'Is it you, my Prince?' said she to him. 'You have waited a long while.'

The Prince, charmed with these words, and much more with the manner in which they were spoken, knew not how to show his joy and gratitude; he assured her that he loved her better than he did himself; their discourse was not well connected, they did weep more than talk -- little eloquence, a great deal of love. He was more at a loss than she, and we need not wonder at it; she had time to think on what to say to him; for it is very probable (though history mentions nothing of it) that the good Fairy, during so long a sleep, had given her very agreeable dreams"...

Children Deaming...The happy ending of the Grimm's Briar Rose would presumably balance out the fearful aspects of Sleeping Beauty for dreaming children. The sweetened Disney version of 1959 kept the happy ending, although it did include Maleficent, a fearful evil witch, who is ultimately killed by Prince Phillip, wielding the sword of truth. 

Folklore, legends and fairy tales change with the times. Cultural influences, ranging from violent films and computer games to the popularity of vampires in books, films and TV, appear to have influenced two new versions of Sleeping Beauty ... one, marketed for children, the other, for adults. 

Maleficent and Return of the Dark Side... The newest Disney version of Sleeping Beauty appears -- from viewing the pre-release trialer/preview -- to be very dark, and scary for children. Scheduled to open for the Christmas holidays, it features Angalina Jolie as Maleficent.  Follow this link and be prepared for a film far removed from original Disney version of the story...this one looks like it will bring dark dark dreams to any child that sees it: Maleficent...

Vampires and the new Sleeping Beauty Ballet...Matthew Bourne, generally recognized as a brilliant innovator, has created a new ballet version of Sleeping Beauty. The  original Tchaikovsky score remains, but the story setting, costumes and characters have taken many new turns. In this version, Princess Aurora falls in love with the palace gardener, Leo, who is transformed into a vampire. In this way, he remains young during the long sleep of the Princess. To see video excerpts and to read an excellent review by Celia Wren, click this link: Washington Post

Will children dream of Maleficent? Of vampires? Of dark thorn forests? Or of a beautiful sleeping princess and a handsome prince?

                         
                                           

                   The photo is a scene from Matthew Bourne's new Sleeping Beauty Ballet.

 

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Respect and Courtesy for the Sprite of Story Telling...

Phillip Pullman is an exceptional writer whose compelling literary voice transcends genre and easy classification. The following remarks are excerpted from an article he wrote for the  Manchester Guardian at the time that his book, Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm, A New English Version, was being published. 

"The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put a robin redbreast in a cage. A fairy tale is not a text...

  When I'm at work I'm highly superstitious. My own superstition has to do with the voice in which the story comes out. I believe that every story is attended by its own sprite, whose voice we embody when we tell the tale, and that we tell it more successfully if we approach the sprite with a certain degree of respect and courtesy. These sprites are both old and young, male and female, sentimental and cynical, sceptical and credulous, and so on, and what's more, they're completely amoral: like the air-spirits who helped Strong Hans escape from the cave, the story-sprites are willing to serve whoever has the ring, whoever is telling the tale. To the accusation that this is nonsense, that all you need to tell a story is a human imagination, I reply, 'Of course, and this is the way my imagination works'."

Here is a link to the article... Phillip Pullman in the Manchester Guardian

The illustration is by Arthur Rackham

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                              The Dog Book for Christmas 

Long, long ago, two of Santa’s reindeer were kidnapped by the King of the North and there could be no more Christmas.

Snow Valley Heroes, is the story of how the dogs came down from their own planet and saved Christmas for children everywhere.

“What a truly wonderful and unique Christmas story for the whole family.  Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, by Robert J. McCarty and illustrated by Stella Mustanoja McCarty is the third offering in the Planet of the Dogs series; What an imagination this team has… an ideal book to snuggle up with the little ones on a cold winter night and simply enjoy.” Don Blankenship, Teacher, reviewer-Good Books for Kids

Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, is a joyous holiday book for kids and dog lovers. Published by Barking Planet Productions

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  "Snow Valley Heroes has the potential of becoming a favorite holiday story for both children and adults." -- Wayne Walker, Stories for Children Magazine, Home School Buzz, Home School Book Review ....Read sample chapters: Snow Valley Heroes

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Finding a favorite book from Childhood

One Book In . . .   from a New York Times essay By TERRY EICHER

The best part of sixth grade at Grady Elementary School in Houston, in 1960, was after lunch when Mrs. Wise stood at the front of the classroom and opened a red book and read a few pages aloud. The story was about a peasant boy in medieval England. He pined to be a knight. There was a hermit and a girl in a castle (whom I imagined, speaking of unrequited longing, as the girl who sat in front of me), wicked knights, secret passages and a great deal of suspense. No spoilers here, but suffice to say that it was a story about yearning, maybe even one that taught yearning. Mrs. Wise always stopped reading at the height of excitement, making a small indentation in the margins with her fingernail to mark the spot. We groaned.

I knew what it was to be utterly absorbed in a book, sometimes to the exasperation of my family and friends. But this was the best story I had ever heard. The right story at the right time for students on the edge of pubescence. I daydream...

Read all of this excellent article about childhood and the importance of books, reading, and the influence of good teachers: One Book

The book referred to above is Giles of the Star, The Boy Who Would Be King, by Rebecca Rice

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Smiles come from the people served by Freedom Service Dogs (FSD). Their idea to turn traditional dog shows on their head, and honor the dogs who never make it to those events, will also create many smiles. The following is from their website:

Worst In Show

February 22, 2014 @ 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm

"Freedom Service Dogs of America is hosting an Inaugural Worst in Show dog event, a dog show for the rest! The event welcomes the singing, drooling, hairy dogs that deserve the title of Worst in Show! Think of Eugene Levy & Jane Lynch when they portrayed contestants in the comedic dog show movie, Best in Show. Let your imagination run wild with the hilarity that only the WORST dogs can create!

Join Freedom Service Dogs Saturday, February 22 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. at Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum in Lowry, to be comically entertained like never before! Show includes people food, doggie treats & free parking for even the worst spectators. Help us rescue a shelter dog and enhance the life of a veteran.

Worst in Show will also raise awareness about the wonderful work of FSD...saving shelter dogs and training them to become customized service dogs."

 

 FSD at Colorado Veteran's Day Parades

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Karen Morrow of FSD for the photo and this message: "Freedom Service Dogs had more than 20 staff, volunteers, veterans and service dogs at both the Denver and Colorado Springs Veterans Day parades on Saturday, November 9, 2013. This was a great event for the dogs to practice their comfort in crowds skills and for the organization to come together to celebrate the brave men and women we work so hard to 'welcome home' on a daily basis."

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Folklore and Fairy Tales...where the past lives on in the present.

Fairy Tales and mythology continue to permeate our world in mass media for children and adults....

 Catching Fire, following the extraordinary success of the Hunger Games, has opened in theatres to very favorable reviews and strong ticket sales; pundits predict more sales records...Here is a link to an excellent review by Peter Ranier in the Christian Science Monitor. This link also includes a video preview.

In December, another movie adaptation of Tolkien's books for young readers is coming... Peter Jackson is presenting, THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG...

Both of these films are retellings that have become timeless; in order to understand -- beyond the action, color and exotic characters -- the huge international appeal of these films, I turn to Maria Tatar's book, The Classic Fairy Tales. In pointing out the staying power and significance of  classic  stories, she writes..."that they must be addressing issues that have a significant social function -- whether critical, conservative, compensatory or therapeutic...Fairy tales register an effort on the part of both men and women to develop maps for coping with personal anxieties, family conflicts, social frictions, and the myriad frustrations of everyday life." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.” 
- Dr. Seuss

 

 

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The Book Thief...a  new film

The title, the concept, and the preview intriqued me; but the reviews disappointed me. Apparently, the Book Thief is another example of a misplaced compromise in an effort to achieve box office success. Here is an excerpt from Stephen Holden's review in the New York Times..."Speaking in the honeyed, insinuating tone of the Wolf cajoling Little Red Riding Hood to do his bidding, the narrator of 'The Book Thief' is none other than Death himself (Roger Allam), although he coyly refuses to disclose his identity....."The pieces of the story, which begins in 1938, are so neatly arranged that the movie has the narrative flow and comforting familiarity of a beloved fairy tale...A contradiction between a veneer of innocence and the realities of Nazism and the Holocaust is a signature characteristic of “The Book Thief,” Markus Zusak’s immensely popular young-adult novel, from which the movie, directed by Brian Percival (“Downton Abbey”), was adapted...'The Book Thief' (movie) is a shameless piece of Oscar-seeking Holocaust kitsch."

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Audrey Hendler was inspired  while working with a dog group in a women's prison. She was motivated to start working with young disadvantaged kids -- through the wonders of the canine connection -- to help them build life skills that would help them to overcome the daily problems of their young world, and, hopefully, not end up in prison....

" A Fair Shake for Youth is dedicated to helping under-served and vulnerable youth build empathy, self-esteem and the skills and behaviors that foster positive interactions with family, peers, and the community and help give them a fair shake at a better life."

Click this link to see Audrey and the progam in a video produced by NY1, following her selection as New Yorker of the week. A Fair Shake for Youth was a recipient of a 2013 Planet Dog Foundation Grant 

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"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye"...Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 

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Imagine That:How rough would it be if dogs ruled?...   by Gene Newman

...."There is a series of kids books entitled "Planet of the Dogs" which must be interesting, but I’d like to read a more realistic adult treatment of the idea of dogs becoming the dominant species on Earth. That seems like a better idea...They could still take us for walks and we could help them chase squirrels and watch them do their DNA checks on poles and trees...

Personally, I’d like to be owned by a big friendly breed of dog. If I were in the window of a pet shop and a St. Bernard or an Old English Sheepdog passed by, I’d do all of my tricks to attract their attention – begging, rolling over, playing dead and writing columns."-- Click here to read all the column: Gene Newman

The illustration is from Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale

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Pet Health – How to Keep Them in Their Best Shape...An article with 5 Basic Guidelines for a Dog' s good health and well being... Here's an excerpt...
"Today’s society is not the healthiest for people or for pet health; sedentary lifestyles and poor diets take their toll on the health of millions. Unfortunately, unhealthy people tend to have unhealthy pets. Even more healthy households may be ruining their pet’s health through ignorance, or misunderstanding of what the pet really needs. Here are five things you can do to keep your pet healthy..."

Here is a link to read it all: Healthy Dogs

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Up on the Woof is author/artist CA Wulff's platform for animal advocacy -- especially dogs. For  those who care about dogs, I highly recommend a visit to her world of passionate, informed, and provocative news and ideas. Here are some recent excerpts:

..."Animal rescuers and advocates, we are part of an army. We fight abuse and cruelty on a million battlefields every day. Lots of times, the enemy wins. But we get up the next day and we do it again; and we do it again the day after that. We do it because animals like this little guy (Wulff is referring to a dog thrown off a bridge); they don’t stand a chance without us"...             

Free Kindle Copies...the dog lover's guide to internet advocacy
 
Barking Planet is giving away 25 kindle copies of Wulff's book , "How to Change the World in 30 Seconds: a Web Warrior’s Guide to Animal Advocacy Online", the Award-Winning Finalist in the Animals/Pets category of The 2013 USA Best Book Awards, sponsored by USA Book News. 
 
To register to win, just send an email to: books4doglovers@gmail.com with  ‘enter 30’ in the subject line.
 
Winners will be gifted with a kindle copy through amazon. Winners will be notified on January 3, 2014. 
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A Childhood Hunger for Fairy Tales 

 A. S. Byatt, the highly regarded English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner wrote a fascinating Introduction to the Annotated Brothers Grimm by Maria Tatar. Here is an excerpt... 

 "It took me some time to see that what I thought of as a “real” fairy tale was almost always one collected by the Grimms. But as a child—and even more as an adult—I had an instinct for the power and the—somewhat dangerous—delight of their collection.
I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War. I read early and voraciously and indiscriminately—Andrew Lang’s colored Fairy Books, Hans Andersen, King Arthur,Robin Hood, and my very favorite book,  Asgard and the Gods...
I never really liked stories about children doing what children do—quarreling and cooking and camping. I liked magic, the unreal, the more than real"
 
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THE MEDIA EQUATION 
Why Barnes & Noble Is Good for Amazon
 DAVID CARR wrote a fascinating article last summer that is every bit as relevant and insightful today as it was then. He cites the importance of the  bookstore experience for people in a world where ebooks are rewriting the norms for readers, publishers and bookselllers alike.                         Here are excerpts...

"On Thursday night in Clifton, N.J., Barnes & Noble was a way station, a third place between work and home where people sought respite and diversion. With its high ceilings, wide aisles and a large Starbucks, it is the kind of retail outlet that gives big-box stores a good name.

A Barnes & Noble bookstore in Los Angeles. The company’s retail stores and Web site generated pretax earnings of $374.2 million in its most recent fiscal year.

In one aisle, a father and daughter were having a spirited generational discussion over the side-by-side covers of “The Great Gatsby,” one of which bore an image of Leonardo DiCaprio. For reasons I wasn’t quite clear about but nonetheless found charming, an older couple used a book on vegetarian cooking to cover up a copy of “The Art of Seduction” on the shelf. Nearby, two apparent siblings, one sporting pink hair and the other purple, traded loud opinions over the True Crime display.

Watching the readers lounge in chairs with a view of Route 3, it was hard to reconcile the pageantry of retailing with the brutal recent headlines about the book business...

Barnes & Noble tried to keep up with the technological shift, but the company’s earnings were perforated by a $177 million loss from its Nook division, and that news took out William Lynch Jr., the chief executive, and threw a deep scare into publishers.

In my view, Barnes & Noble is a company that did the right thing, and got clobbered anyway. When most media companies get into the device business, what pops out is clunky and useless, but the Nook is an excellent reading device that drew critical praise and, initially, buyers. At a time when legacy media companies are derided for letting the future overtake them, Barnes & Noble aggressively innovated...

After Borders called it quits two years ago this week, Barnes & Noble became the last big chain where publishers could get the exposure for their books that allows readers to discover them, and to sell all manner of books big and small that are still part of the foundation of the industry.

Morgan Entrekin, publisher at Grove/Atlantic, says everyone has skin in the retail game. “We need to have a diversity of distribution channels to be healthy, and Amazon may want it all, but they are smart enough to know that,” he said. “People can’t live online all the time...”

Here is the link to read it all: B&N and Amazon

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 The Golden Age, Children's Books, and Literary Value...

"In spite of what such histories (of children's literature) may tell us, there is no single golden age, no moment when the literature for and of children is better, more precise,or more effective than at any other moment. Children's literature is not some ideal category that a certain age may reach and that another may miss. It is instead a kind of system, one whose social and asthetic value is determined out of the relationships among those who make, market, and read books. No single work of literature is canonical; rather, works achieve canonical status through their participation in a system of literary value."

Seth Lerer in his book Children's Literature, A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter... The illustration is by Arthur Rackham

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 "Snow Valley Heroes is a wonderful book for a Christmas present. Popular for children and grandchildren, but truly for all ages of dog lovers, it is a one time story that has never been told — how our beloved dogs came to Earth to be part of our lives while bringing friendship, love and loyalty to mankind.  Do yourself a favor….pick up a book or two for your children, grandchildren, the school library or public library. And one for yourself!"

Reviewed by Nancy Houser, editor Way Cool Dogs, writer, Digital Journal, Inc

The illustration, by Stella McCarty, is from Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale

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I found the quote below on Sunbear Squad where guidlines, free wallet cards, and "how to" save a dog in distress information are available at no cost for all good people. 

"We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace." 

—Albert Schweitzer, "The Philosophy of Civilization" -.

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“There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog”  Konrad Lorenz
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Turning Points

   
                              

                  Reading is a turning point in life for a child.

Folklore and fairy tales are filled with turning points...leaving home, overcoming  difficult obstacles, finding hope in dark times.

Classic stories resonate, igniting the imagination and opening the mind to possibilities.

There is a kind of magic in the connection between these stories and young readers.

In this blog, we explore -- from John Locke to Neil Gaiman and Kevin Maher to Maria Tatar -- the importance of books in the lives of children.

We also explore the contributions of therapy and service dogs to lives young and old.

 The illustation of Hansel and Gretel, a classic story filled with turning points, is  by Arthur Rackham.

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Imagine and Understand...

Neil Gaiman, the master of imagination and stories of wonder, wrote an article in the Guardian filled with passion and ideas about the value of books in the lives of children. Here is an excerpt....

"We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation
to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different...

Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. 'If you want your children to be intelligent,' he said, 'read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.' He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand"...

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Hey Kids...

Let's read a Fairy Tale about a brother and sister...a real adventure... where lots of things happen to them...they are Abandoned, Lost, Deceived, Caged, Threatened with Death, and Kill a Witch by Pushing her into an Oven...hey, it must be the incredible fun adventure of Hansel and Gretel.

James Norton in the Christian Science Monitor wrote an insightful article, Grimm tales teach kids to grapple with evil. Based largely on his own experiences,  he cites the importance of context and parenting in helping children to find balance in dealing with the frightening and cruel aspects of children's books. Here is an excerpt: 

"As a young child I grew up reading – and being profoundly influenced by – books including short World War II histories (including a book about the Holocaust for young readers), the unabridged Grimm's Fairy Tales, and D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths, wherein Loki tricks the gods into murdering the good-hearted Baldur and eventually precipitates the end of the world through his traitorous actions. I thought this stuff was amazing – shocking, engaging, confusing, and the first step on a lifetime of avid reading. It was a safe, vicarious way to wrestle with the existence of evil in the world (something that any serious student of the Bible thinks about, as well.)

And despite a literature diet that had a serious dark side, I turned out OK: No criminal convictions (or even charges!), a steady job as a writer, a happy marriage, and an author credit on a number of books – including a short history of the Holocaust for young readers." 

The illustration of Gretel pushing the horrible witch into the oven is by Arthur Rackham 

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PAL -- Helping Kids to Enjoy Reading and Veterans to Enjoy the Day...

It takes less than 2 minutes in this documentary video, to see the special quality of therapy dogs... it just happens naturally ...Rascal, a PAL Dog

PAL (People Animals Love) is an exemplary multifaceted therapy dog organization serving Washington, DC, and surrounding areas. 

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Playthings Of the Mind...John Locke and Children's Literature

Seth Lerer's fascinating book, Children's Literature,  A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter, is filled with information and insights that are new to me. I had known that Locke was a writer and philosopher of diverse talents (he was also a doctor), and that his ideas had influenced the founding fathers of the US, but I was unaware that Locke's influence was so widespread and lasting.  And that this influence, through the centuries, has had a pervasive influence on children's education and the books they read.

Lerer writes of how John Locke's writings, in the late seventeenth century, established a "philosophically grounded theory of education...that the child learns from experience in the modern world...and that the goal of education should be both instruction and delight."

..."Locke's impact on eighteenth and early nineteenth century children's literature...lies, too, in his emphasis on the particulars of sensory experience, his fascination with the playthings of the world, and the creation of a figurative language to explain just what fills the mind..."   

..."The modern legacy of Locke's work may be, in the end, that modern fascination with the two sides of the child's playthings -- tales of the toys that come alive, and stories of the animals that talk and feel. It would be no exaggeration to say, for example, that Winnie the Pooh remains a profoundly Lockean book: one keyed to narratives of mental growth, focused on the ways of reading texts, and centered on the habits of a bear "of little brain". 

Lerer cites many other examples of how Locke's ideas, particularly those expressed in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1692), have directly influenced the evolution and practice of children's education and literature. 

 

"There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected quesions of a child than the discourses of men"...John Locke

The illustration is by E.H. Shepard

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"Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, has the potential of becoming a favorite holiday story for both children and adults." -- Wayne Walker, Stories for Children Magazine, Home School Buzz, Home School Book Review

 

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How to Adopt A Dog...from the heartland of Nebraska comes this very informative article

"October is Adopt-a-Dog and Adopt-a-Shelter Dog month, with our article filled to the brim with tips on bringing your new companion home.

With the help of a personal PRNewswire-USNewswire by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), important questions will be answered before you sign that dotted line on the adoption papers.

'Adopting a dog is a fun and heartwarming experience that can transform your life for the better, but it’s also a very serious decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly,' says Dr. Clark K. Fobian, president of the AVMA. 'The primary reason dogs are given up to animal shelters is unfulfilled expectations, so before you even consider bringing a dog into your life it is crucial to take time, involve your family, and give careful consideration to your expectations and the needs of the dog to be sure it’s a good match. Your local veterinarian is an excellent resource for answers to your questions''...

Here is the link to read all of this informative article: Way Cool Dogs 

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Dubliners resonates in a 13 year old boy -- forever 

Kevin Maher, a journalist for the Times in England, grew up in Dublin. His recentl debut novel,        The Fields, has received enthusiastic reviews. This excerpt, from NPR's You Must Read This is a compelling example of how a book, read when we are young, can be of lasting importance.

"...Me and the lads laughed it off, and said that it was arse and that Master McCarthy was cracked. But a line in "The Dead," one single line, wouldn't leave me. It described the hero, Gabriel Conroy, lying next to Gretta, on the bed in a darkened hotel room, after the big weep, and it said, "One by one, they were all becoming shades." The line stayed with me. Haunted me even. Me, a teenage boy who's father had cancer, and who covered with everyday humour the ineluctable fact that we were all, everyday, becoming shades. And it, that single line, made me return to "The Dead." And, eventually, relentlessly so. To see the beauty and depth within it, and in every line. "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly"...

'The Dead' did its work, and spread through me a love for Joyce, like a sickness. Back through every story in Dubliners, to A Portrait to Chamber Music, Ulysses, and evenFinnegans Wake. And though I still read Ulysses, and adore it, once a year (starting, fanatically, every Bloomsday), I have a special place in my heart for 'The Dead,' and for that one ineffably moving line. And it still gets me today. A gut punch of sadness for the long lost teenage me, for my beloved father, and even for Joyce himself. All, all becoming shades."

You Must Read This is produced and edited by the team at NPR Books. 

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I admire the Planet Dog Foundation(PDF) for the outstanding financial support they provide to a variety of non-profit organizations that train and provide service, therapy and rescue dogs. Robert Semrow had a very informative interview with Kristen Smith, on his blog, Pet World Insider. If you want to be an informed dog lover or you care about the wonderful work these organizations perform, take a look at this Interview with Kristen, who is the director of PDF: Pet World Insider

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Read sample chapters of all the books in the Planet Of The Dogs series by  clicking here :Books

Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore or via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's...

Librarians, teachers, bookstores...Order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount.

Therapy reading dog owners, librarians and teachers with therapy reading dog programs -- you can write us at barkingplanet@aol.com and we will send you free reader copies from the Planet of the Dogs Series...Read Dog Books to Dogs....Ask any therapy reading dog: "Do you like it when the kids read dog books to you?"

And Now -- for the First Time -- ebooks of the Planet Of The Dogs and Castle In The Mist are   now available  on KDP select and Castle In The Mist is a free Kindle Book on November 8-9....     Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, will be available on November 15...in time for the Holiday Gift Season... 

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Voyages of Discovery...what do books mean to children

"For many of us childhood books are sacred objects. Often read to pieces, these books took us on voyages of discovery, leading us into secret new worlds that magnify children's desires and anxieties and address the great existent mysteries. Like David Copperfield, who comforted himself by reading fairy tales, some of us once read "as if for life", using books not merely as consolation but as a way of navigating reality, of figuring out how to survive in a world ruled by adults."

This eloquent description of what books mean to children, is excerpted from Maria Tatar's Introduction to her wonderful book, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. 

The photo-illustration, inspired by the original OZ book, is from the movie, Oz,The Great and Powerful .

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Over 43 million US families own at least one dog...36% U.S. households owned a dog in 2011-12...source: AVMA

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educating alice

Educating Alice is the blog of Monica Edinger, a passionate advocate of children's books, and author of a new book with a groundswell of excellent reviews, Africa Is My Home. The following excerpt is from the ABOUT page on Educating Alice. 

"I'm Monica Edinger and this blog of mine is about teaching, my life’s work; literature, especially that created for children; history, especially as it is taught to and learned by children; Africa, especially Sierra Leone where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer; and other sundry topics as they come to my attention. The books I write about come to me in various ways: some I buy, some I borrow, and some are given to me. None are stolen.

As for Alice and her education, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is my favorite book."

The photo of Ms Edinger was taken at a book signing for Africa Is My Home at the Bank Street Book Store in New York City. 

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PAWPRINTS: Boston Children's Hospital Therapy Dog Program

One of this year's Planet Dog Foundation winners, the hospital is conducting a research program to measure the quality and benefits of the hospital's Pawprints therapy dog visits with children who are patients...the following excerpt is from their website

"What happens during a dog visit?

Some of our dogs visit patient's rooms and some of them visit the resource rooms on the floors. Once the visit is scheduled, the patient decides how he or she wants to interact with the dog. The dogs may sit on the floor, a chair, or on a clean sheet on the patient's bed. The patient may pet, play with, talk to, or watch the dog. Siblings and other family members are encouraged to interact with the therapy dogs as well. However, at no time may food be offered to any of the therapy dogs during a visit, since they are on the job! Before leaving for the day, every Pawprints dog is offered special treats by the hospital to say "thank you" for a job well done."...the photo is of Karma, one of the dogs in the Pawprints Program

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Cayr Ariel Wulff's Books for dog lovers ... 

 With the holidays on the horizon, Barking Planet Productions is happy to remind readers that we publish CA Wulff's books for dog lovers...her passion for animals and her life experiences combine to create wonderful gift books. 
 -  Spread the joy and experience of the human/ canine bond with Circling the Waggins and Parade of Misfits.
 -  Give pet owners a plan of pet safety and preparedness with Finding Fido.
 -  Give the social activist on your list the tools to save the lives of shelter pets with How to Change the World in 30 Seconds.

"There's a lot more to living with dogs than wet noses and going walkies. Cayr Ariel Wulff entertainingly chronicles the rocky flip side of pet care in "Circling the Waggins," a heroic tale of triumph over turmoil and exhaustion."   Circling the Waggins reviewed by Bob Tarte, author of Kitty Cornered, Enslaved by Ducks, and Fowl Weather... 

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LitWorld is a wonderful, non-profit literacy organization fostering resilience, hope, and joy through the power of story. It creates turning points in the lives of disadvantaged children, opening the door to reading. 

Click this link: LITWORLD...It will take you to their website; click the video waiting for you there at the top of the page (I Am A Powerful Story). If you believe in children, books and literacy, it will warm your heart.  (If you look closely, in a couple of scenes, you will see a woman with dark hair dancing with the children...her name is Pam Allyn, and and she is the director and passionate force behind Lit World) 

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The Childrens Literary Salon at the NY Public Library... Saturday, November 2nd at 2:00 p.m... The Art of the Great Picture Book Read-Aloud.... in the South Court Auditorium

 Wednesday, November 13th at 6:30 p.m...Cross-Cultural Literature: Picture Books Beyond Words...in the Berger Forum on the second floor of the Schwarzman Building.
These lively forums are free, and hosted by children's librarian, Elizabet Bird. Please direct all questions about these programs to Elizabeth...at elizabethbird@bookops.org.
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 A dog is lying by the side of the road...What do I do? What are my options? I want to be helpful, but this is all new to me... For answers, examples, true stories and more, visit Sunbear Squad...Let the experience of compassionate dog lovers guide you. Here's the Link: SunbearSquad  -

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 “Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day. 
It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them." John Grogan - author of Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog 

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October Turning Points

   


                              

                  Reading is a turning point in life for a child.

Folklore and fairy tales are filled with turning points...leaving home, overcoming  difficult obstacles, finding hope in dark times.

Classic stories resonate, igniting the imagination and opening the mind to possibilities.

There is a kind of magic in the connection between these stories and young readers.

In this blog, we explore -- from John Locke to Neil Gaiman and Kevin Maher to Maria Tatar -- the importance of books in the lives of children.

We also explore the contributions of therapy and service dogs to lives young and old.

 The illustation of Hansel and Gretel, a classic story filled with turning points, is  by Arthur Rackham.

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Imagine and Understand...

Neil Gaiman, the master of imagination and stories of wonder, wrote an article in the Guardian filled with passion and ideas about the value of books in the lives of children. Here is an excerpt....

"We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation

to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different...

Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. 'If you want your children to be intelligent,' he said, 'read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.' He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand"...

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Hey Kids...

Let's read a Fairy Tale about a brother and sister...a real adventure... where lots of things happen to them...they are Abandoned, Lost, Deceived, Caged, Threatened with Death, and Kill a Witch by Pushing her into an Oven...hey, it must be the incredible fun adventure of Hansel and Gretel.

James Norton in the Christian Science Monitor wrote an insightful article, Grimm tales teach kids to grapple with evil. Based largely on his own experiences,  he cites the importance of context and parenting in helping children to find balance in dealing with the frightening and cruel aspects of children's books. Here is an excerpt: 

"As a young child I grew up reading – and being profoundly influenced by – books including short World War II histories (including a book about the Holocaust for young readers), the unabridged Grimm's Fairy Tales, and D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths, wherein Loki tricks the gods into murdering the good-hearted Baldur and eventually precipitates the end of the world through his traitorous actions. I thought this stuff was amazing – shocking, engaging, confusing, and the first step on a lifetime of avid reading. It was a safe, vicarious way to wrestle with the existence of evil in the world (something that any serious student of the Bible thinks about, as well.)

And despite a literature diet that had a serious dark side, I turned out OK: No criminal convictions (or even charges!), a steady job as a writer, a happy marriage, and an author credit on a number of books – including a short history of the Holocaust for young readers." 

The illustration of Gretel pushing the horrible witch into the oven is by Arthur Rackham 

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PAL -- Helping Kids to Enjoy Reading and Veterans to Enjoy the Day...

It takes less than 2 minutes in this documentary video, to see the special quality of therapy dogs... it just happens naturally ...Rascal, a PAL Dog

PAL (People Animals Love) is an exemplary multifaceted therapy dog organization serving Washington, DC, and surrounding areas. 

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Playthings Of the Mind...John Locke and Children's Literature

Seth Lerer's fascinating book, Children's Literature,  A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter, is filled with information and insights that are new to me. I had known that Locke was a writer and philosopher of diverse talents (he was also a doctor), and that his ideas had influenced the founding fathers of the US, but I was unaware that Locke's influence was so widespread and lasting.  And that this influence, through the centuries, has had a pervasive influence on children's education and the books they read.

Lerer writes of how John Locke's writings, in the late seventeenth century, established a "philosophically grounded theory of education...that the child learns from experience in the modern world...and that the goal of education should be both instruction and delight."

..."Locke's impact on eighteenth and early nineteenth century children's literature...lies, too, in his emphasis on the particulars of sensory experience, his fascination with the playthings of the
world, and the creation of a figurative language to explain just what fills the mind..."   

..."The modern legacy of Locke's work may be, in the end, that modern fascination with the two sides of the child's playthings -- tales of the toys that come alive, and stories of the animals that talk and feel. It would be no exaggeration to say, for example, that Winnie the Pooh remains a profoundly Lockean book: one keyed to narratives of mental growth, focused on the ways of reading texts, and centered on the habits of a bear "of little brain". 

Lerer cites many other examples of how Locke's ideas, particularly those expressed in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1692), have directly influenced the evolution and practice of children's education and literature. 

 

"There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected quesions of a child than the discourses of men"...John Locke

The illustration is by E.H. Shepard

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"Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, has the potential of becoming a favorite holiday story for both children and adults." -- Wayne Walker, Stories for Children Magazine, Home School Buzz, Home School Book Review

 

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How to Adopt A Dog...from the heartland of Nebraska comes this very informative article

"October is Adopt-a-Dog and Adopt-a-Shelter Dog month, with our article filled to the brim with tips on bringing your new companion home.

With the help of a personal PRNewswire-USNewswire by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), important questions will be answered before you sign that dotted line on the adoption papers.

'Adopting a dog is a fun and heartwarming experience that can transform your life for the better, but it’s also a very serious decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly,' says Dr. Clark K. Fobian, president of the AVMA. 'The primary reason dogs are given up to animal shelters is unfulfilled expectations, so before you even consider bringing a dog into your life it is crucial to take time, involve your family, and give careful consideration to your expectations and the needs of the dog to be sure it’s a good match. Your local veterinarian is an excellent resource for answers to your questions''...

Here is the link to read all of this informative article: Way Cool Dogs 

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Dubliners resonates in a 13 year old boy -- forever 

Kevin Maher, a journalist for the Times in England, grew up in Dublin. His recentl debut novel,          The Fields, has received enthusiastic reviews. This excerpt, from NPR's You Must Read This is a compelling example of how a book, read when we are young, can be of lasting importance.

"...Me and the lads laughed it off, and said that it was arse and that Master McCarthy was cracked. But a line in "The Dead," one single line, wouldn't leave me. It described the hero, Gabriel Conroy,
lying next to Gretta, on the bed in a darkened hotel room, after the big weep, and it said, "One by one, they were all becoming shades." The line stayed with me. Haunted me even. Me, a teenage boy who's father had cancer, and who covered with everyday humour the ineluctable fact that we were all, everyday, becoming shades. And it, that single line, made me return to "The Dead." And, eventually, relentlessly so. To see the beauty and depth within it, and in every line. "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly"...

'The Dead' did its work, and spread through me a love for Joyce, like a sickness. Back through every story in Dubliners, to A Portrait to Chamber Music, Ulysses, and evenFinnegans Wake. And though I still read Ulysses, and adore it, once a year (starting, fanatically, every Bloomsday), I have a special place in my heart for 'The Dead,' and for that one ineffably moving line. And it still gets me today. A gut punch of sadness for the long lost teenage me, for my beloved father, and even for Joyce himself. All, all becoming shades."

You Must Read This is produced and edited by the team at NPR Books. 

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I admire the Planet Dog Foundation(PDF) for the outstanding financial support they provide to a variety of non-profit organizations that train and provide service, therapy and rescue dogs. Robert Semrow had a very informative interview with Kristen Smith, on his blog, Pet World Insider. If you want to be an informed dog lover or you care about the wonderful work these organizations perform, take a look at this Interview with Kristen, who is the director of PDF: Pet World Insider

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Read sample chapters of all the books in the Planet Of The Dogs series by  clicking here :Books

Our books are available through your favorite independent bookstore or via Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell's...

Librarians, teachers, bookstores...Order Planet Of The Dogs, Castle In The Mist, and Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, through Ingram with a full professional discount.

Therapy reading dog owners, librarians and teachers with therapy reading dog programs -- you can write us at barkingplanet@aol.com and we will send you free reader copies from the Planet of the Dogs Series...Read Dog Books to Dogs....Ask any therapy reading dog: "Do you like it when the kids read dog books to you?"

And Now -- for the First Time -- ebooks of the Planet Of The Dogs and Castle In The Mist are   now available  on KDP select....     Snow Valley Heroes, A Christmas Tale, will be available on November 15...in time for the Holiday Gift Season... 

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Voyages of Discovery...what do books mean to children

"For many of us childhood books are sacred objects. Often read to pieces, these books took us on voyages of discovery, leading us into secret new worlds that magnify children's desires and anxieties and address the great existent mysteries. Like David Copperfield, who comforted himself by reading fairy tales, some of us once read "as if for life", using books not merely as consolation but as a way of navigating reality, of figuring out how to survive in a world ruled by adults."

This eloquent description of what books mean to children, is excerpted from Maria Tatar's Introduction to her wonderful book, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. 

The photo-illustration, inspired by the original OZ book, is from the movie, Oz,The Great and Powerful .

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Over 43 million US families own at least one dog...36% U.S. households owned a dog in 2011-12...source: AVMA

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educating alice

Educating Alice is the blog of Monica Edinger, a passionate advocate of children's books, and author of a new book with a groundswell of excellent reviews, Africa Is My Home. The following excerpt is from the ABOUT page on Educating Alice. 

"I'm Monica Edinger and this blog of mine is about teaching, my life’s work; literature, especially that created for children; history, especially as it is taught to and learned by children; Africa, especially Sierra Leone where I was a Peace Corps Volunteer; and other sundry topics as they come to my attention. The books I write about come to me in various ways: some I buy, some I borrow, and some are given to me. None are stolen.

As for Alice and her education, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is my favorite book."

The photo of Ms Edinger was taken at a book signing for Africa Is My Home at the Bank Street Book Store in New York City. 

.............................

PAWPRINTS: Boston Children's Hospital Therapy Dog Program

One of this year's Planet Dog Foundation winners, the hospital is conducting a research program to measure the quality and benefits of the hospital's Pawprints therapy dog visits with children who are patients...the following excerpt is from their website

"What happens during a dog visit?

Some of our dogs visit patient's rooms and some of them visit the resource rooms on the floors. Once the visit is scheduled, the patient decides how he or she wants to interact with the dog. The dogs may sit on the floor, a chair, or on a clean sheet on the patient's bed. The patient may pet, play with, talk to, or watch the dog. Siblings and other family members are encouraged to interact with the therapy dogs as well. However, at no time may food be offered to any of the therapy dogs during a visit, since they are on the job! Before leaving for the day, every Pawprints dog is offered special treats by the hospital to say "thank you" for a job well done."...the photo is of Karma, one of the dogs in the Pawprints Program

.......................

Cayr Ariel Wulff's Books for dog lovers ... 

 With the holidays on the horizon, Barking Planet Productions is happy to
remind readers that we publish CA Wulff's books for dog lovers...her passion for animals and her life experiences combine to create wonderful gift books. 
 -  Spread the joy and experience of the human/ canine bond with Circling the Waggins and Parade of Misfits.
 -  Give pet owners a plan of pet safety and preparedness with Finding Fido.
 -  Give the social activist on your list the tools to save the lives of shelter pets with How to Change the World in 30 Seconds.

"There's a lot more to living with dogs than wet noses and going walkies. Cayr Ariel Wulff entertainingly chronicles the rocky flip side of pet care in "Circling the Waggins," a heroic tale of triumph over turmoil and exhaustion."   Circling the Waggins reviewed by Bob Tarte, author of Kitty Cornered, Enslaved by Ducks, and Fowl Weather... 

...............................

LitWorld is a wonderful, non-profit literacy organization fostering resilience, hope, and joy through the power of story. It creates turning points in the lives of disadvantaged children, opening the door to reading. 

Click this link: LITWORLD...It will take you to their website; click the video waiting for you there at the top of the page (I Am A Powerful Story). If you believe in children, books and literacy, it will warm your heart.  (If you look closely, in a couple of scenes, you will see a woman with dark hair dancing with the children...her name is Pam Allyn, and and she is the director and passionate force behind Lit World) 

.........................

The Childrens Literary Salon at the NY Public Library... Saturday,
November 2nd at 2:00 p.m... The Art of the Great Picture Book Read-Aloud.... in the South Court Auditorium

 Wednesday, November 13th at 6:30 p.m...Cross-Cultural Literature: Picture Books Beyond Words...in the Berger Forum on the second floor of the Schwarzman Building.
These lively forums are free, and hosted by children's librarian, Elizabet Bird. Please direct all questions about these programs to Elizabeth...at elizabethbird@bookops.org.
................................

 A dog is lying by the side of the road...What do I do? What are my options? I want to be helpful, but this is all new to me... For answers, examples, true stories and more, visit Sunbear Squad...Let the experience of compassionate dog lovers guide you. Here's the Link: SunbearSquad  -

................................

 “Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day. 
It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them." John Grogan - author of Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog 

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