Putting a fear to rest
Sara Barker is afraid of dogs. Whenever she sees even a picture of one, she feels clammy and cold all over. So what's Sara to do when she learns that her new next-door neighbor owns two of them? Two young and big dogs, to be specific. Her neighbor turns out to be an ebullient older woman who befriends Sara and promises her dogs will keep their distance. But one day a situation arises in which Sara is forced to venture into the yard next door, even as the dogs there are desperately barking.
Kids will relate to Sara, and dog-lovers will enjoy seeing her overcome her fears in this easy-to-read chapter book, with numerous cheerful pictures.
The Next-Door Dogs is a 2006 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Putting a fear to rest
Sara Barker is afraid of dogs. Whenever she sees even a picture of one, she feels clammy and cold all over. So what's Sara to do when she learns that her new next-door neighbor owns two of them? Two young and big dogs, to be specific. Her neighbor turns out to be an ebullient older woman who befriends Sara and promises her dogs will keep their distance. But one day a situation arises in which Sara is forced to venture into the yard next door, even as the dogs there are desperately barking.
Kids will relate to Sara, and dog-lovers will enjoy seeing her overcome her fears in this easy-to-read chapter book, with numerous cheerful pictures.
The Next-Door Dogs is a 2006 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
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Overview
Putting a fear to rest
Sara Barker is afraid of dogs. Whenever she sees even a picture of one, she feels clammy and cold all over. So what's Sara to do when she learns that her new next-door neighbor owns two of them? Two young and big dogs, to be specific. Her neighbor turns out to be an ebullient older woman who befriends Sara and promises her dogs will keep their distance. But one day a situation arises in which Sara is forced to venture into the yard next door, even as the dogs there are desperately barking.
Kids will relate to Sara, and dog-lovers will enjoy seeing her overcome her fears in this easy-to-read chapter book, with numerous cheerful pictures.
The Next-Door Dogs is a 2006 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466894228 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 07/07/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 112 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
| Age Range: | 7 - 10 Years |
About the Author
Colby Rodowsky is the author of many books, including Not My Dog, an ALA Notable Book. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Amy June Bates is also the illustrator of Speak to Me (And I Will Listen between the Lines) by Karen English. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Colby Rodowsky
Whenever I try to piece together anything even slightly resembling an autobiographical sketch, I find that a lot of my remembering has to do with books: what I read (almost anything); where I read (almost anywhere); and why.
Why is the key. It has, in part, to do with being an only child, often alone.
I spent a part of every summer visiting my grandmother on the eastern shore of Virginia, where the days were long and hot and there was absolutely nothing to do. Nothing to do, that is, until I discovered the library that had been a church (open three afternoons a week, and with the fiction section two steps up, where the altar used to be), and for the off-days, my grandmother's attic (and all the books my mother and aunt had read as children). It's no wonder that that library and attic keep turning up in the things I write.
There is, after all, something to be said for aloneness, at least in my case, because it led to books. I like to think that there is a lovely distinction between aloneness and loneliness, and the real reader will rejoice in the one and never know the other.
Anyway, I read. (Well, I did other things, too: jumped rope and collected bottle caps and paper dolls.) I grew up in Baltimore, New York, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore again; went to college (majoring in English); and taught school (third grade and then Special Education). I got married (to a lawyer who is now a judge) and had six children (five girls and one boy) and learned to make cupcakes and Halloween costumes and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. I still read. In order to find time for reading, I had to make sure the children had something to do -- so I cultivated readers. Believe it or not, in a household of eight, we all managed to find time for a little aloneness.
But there was something else that kept prodding me: the books I hadn't written yet. Once, when I was about ten years old, I woke my mother in the middle of the night and said, "Who shall I dedicate my first book to?" And she, with great practicality, said,"Why don't you write it first." And went back to sleep.
So, when the children were old enough to make their own cupcakes and Halloween costumes, I did. I have been writing ever since and hope to keep it up for a long time to come.
The children are grown now and there are five sons-in-law, a daughter-in-law, and thirteen grandchildren.
There are new readers in the family to encourage, to foster.
Amy June Bates is also the illustrator of Speak to Me (And I Will Listen between the Lines) by Karen English. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Read an Excerpt
The Next-Door Dogs
By Colby Rodowsky
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2005 Colby RodowskyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9422-8
CHAPTER 1
Who, Me?
"They have cookies at the market with twisty chocolate tops," said Sara.
"Or giant soft pretzels," said Jessica.
"Or," said Cindy, "maybe we'll go to the drugstore and get one of those really big bags of M&M's on account of that's my mother's most favorite candy of all."
Sara and her friends were heading for the neighborhood shopping center one afternoon so that Cindy could buy a birthday present for her mother. They zigzagged along the sidewalk on Deepdene Road, carefully hopping over cracks. They crossed the alley and went past the pet store and the children's bookstore and the gift shop with the funny name. It was called Bungees.
"Wait!" said Cindy, catching hold of her friends and pulling them back to stand in front of the plateglass window, which was filled with bowls and aprons and candlesticks. "Let's go in there."
"To Bungees?" said Sara. "Things in there will cost way more than you can spend."
"Let's go anyway," said Cindy. "Maybe they'll have something super-small that won't be very much money."
Jessica held the door open, and a cool, spicy apple smell greeted them. The girls made their way to the back of the shop. They stopped to pick up coasters and china boxes and a tiny mirror with flowers painted on the edges, first looking at the prices, then setting the objects carefully back on the shelves.
Sara followed Cindy and Jessica for a while, until she spotted a large red-and-blue-and-yellow platter in the form of a fish. As she stood looking at it, she began to imagine what it would be like if there were dishes made like all the foods people ate. She thought about platters shaped like chickens and T-bone steaks and even waffles. She had just begun to picture a serving bowl that was like a sweet potato, sort of lumpy and pointy on the ends, the way sweet potatoes are, when she spotted a very large something coming around a display of umbrellas.
It was a dog. A very large black and shiny dog with tags on its collar that jangled as it walked. And it was coming right toward Sara.
That quickly, Sara stopped thinking about fish platters and sweet-potato bowls. That quickly, she headed away from the dog and scooted around a counter piled with place mats and picture frames. That quickly, she was out on the sidewalk in front of the store.
* * *
Sara moved down the block and stared into the bookstore window while she waited for her friends. She wiped her hands down the sides of her jeans and took slow, deep breaths, sure that everyone walking by could hear her heart going thumpa thumpa thumpa.
"What happened to you?" asked Jessica, when she and Cindy came out of the shop. "One minute you were there, and then Buster, the owner's dog, came along, and suddenly you weren't."
"Yeah," said Cindy, rolling her eyes. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were afraid of dogs."
"Who, me?" screeched Sara. "No way. I'm not afraid of anything."
More about Sara
But Sara Barker was afraid of dogs. She was nine years old and was pretty sure that she was too old to be afraid. But she was anyway. She was afraid of the ruffing noise they made when they barked and the way they sometimes showed their big white pointed teeth. She was even afraid of the way they swoosh — swoosh — swooshed their tails back and forth.
Most of the time, Sara thought of herself as a very brave person. She didn't mind thunderstorms or snakes or slithery, slimy worms. She liked scary movies, lions in the zoo, and haunted houses at Halloween.
But dogs were a different story.
The worst thing about being afraid of dogs, aside from the shivery feeling Sara got whenever she saw one, was trying to keep other people from finding out.
Except for her family, of course. Sara's mother and father knew, and so did her twelve-year-old brother, Will, and her grandparents and aunts and uncles.
Mrs. Barker had long talks with Sara, mostly at bedtime, about her fear and what she could do to overcome it. She even once took Sara to visit a friend whose dog had just had a litter of puppies. Sara had stood looking down at the mother dog surrounded by six little balls of white fur. But as she watched them, the palms of her hands began to sweat and her stomach felt twitchy. She ran outside and waited on the porch until her mother was ready to go.
Mr. Barker brought books home for Sara that were all about dogs: big ones and little ones; dogs in circuses and dogs who lived on farms, or in the wild. Sometimes he rented videos about collies or Dalmatians for the family to watch together. These were movies about Lassie and Pongo and Perdita — dogs everybody in the world seemed to love. Except Sara. Each time her father put a tape in the machine, Sara waited until the lights were turned down low and then tiptoed out of the room. She didn't know which was worse: being afraid of dogs, or her parents always trying to make her not afraid.
Sara knew that Will thought she was a baby and a scaredy-cat. But if he called her these names out loud, Mrs. Barker would scrunch her eyebrows at him and say, "Everyone's afraid of something." And Mr. Barker would say, "That's enough, William," in his sternest voice.
Sara's grandparents and aunts and uncles never said anything to her about dogs. On occasion, though, one of them might whisper to her mother or father, "Is she still afraid of you-know-whats?"
Sara especially didn't want her friends to know about this. Through the years she had come up with lots of tricks to keep them from finding out.
If she and Cindy and Jessica were walking along one side of the street and saw a dog headed toward them, even a dog on a leash, Sara always came up with an excuse to make an escape. "Let's chase butterflies," or "Let's see if somebody with a hole in her pocket dropped money on the sidewalk around the corner," or "Let's look under that giant rock at the other end of the block in case fairies maybe really live there." Then she would let out a whoop and lead the way across the street or down an alley or through the backyard of a nearby house.
When Susie or Margaret or Jane invited her over, Sara would casually say, "Well, you do have a dog, and I'm sort of allergic." Then she would make pretend sneezes and scratch at an invisible rash. Susie or Margaret or Jane would say, "That's okay, because if you come I promise we'll keep the dog down in the basement." This worked for daytime visits, but Sara would never go for a sleepover to a house where there was a dog. That's because she was sure that sometime, during the night, the dog would sneak out of the basement and come and find her. Even in the dark.
It seemed to Sara that all her other friends, those who didn't have dogs, had pictures of dogs. Big posters of golden retrievers or German shepherds or Labs looked down at her from the walls of their bedrooms. Stuffed Scotties or poodles or beagles perched on their beds.
And, even though Sara knew it was the silliest thing of all, she didn't like these unreal dogs either. Just looking at them made her feel cold and clammy all over, almost the way the real ones did.
And it's all Aunt Lillibet's fault, she thought.
Fred
Aunt Lillibet was Mr. Barker's great-aunt, which made her Sara's great-great-aunt. She lived in Virginia in a one-story lavender house that had a sloping backyard with a stream at the very bottom.
Aunt Lillibet sent books to the children for Christmas and their birthdays. She wrote letters and drew tiny pictures where some of the words should have been. Houses and stars and snowmen decorated the pages, along with owls and picket fences. Mr. and Mrs. Barker sent books to Aunt Lillibet for Christmas and her birthday. They also sent pictures of Will and Sara playing in the snow or at the beach or dressed in their Halloween costumes.
In spite of the presents and the letters and the pictures, the children had never actually met Aunt Lillibet until the spring after Sara's fourth birthday, when the family went to visit her for a weekend. All the way down in the car, Mr. Barker had told stories about Aunt Lillibet: how she taught him to fly a kite when he was little, and how to catch crabs with chicken necks as bait, tied to a piece of string. He described his aunt as a tall, imposing woman with heaps of white hair piled up on her head, all held in place by thin yellow sticks that looked like knitting needles, or maybe pencils. He said that when she spoke, her voice made a scratchy, sandpaper-on-wood kind of sound, and that, to his way of thinking, she always smelled like cinnamon toast.
"And," Mr. Barker went on, "while she wouldn't give a cat the time of day, Aunt Lillibet loves dogs."
When Mr. Barker stopped the car in the driveway of the lavender house, Aunt Lillibet was in the front yard piling mulch around the azalea bushes. As soon as she saw the car, she threw her trowel up in the air, peeled off her gardening gloves, and hurried across the lawn. "You're here," Aunt Lillibet said in her sandpaper voice as they all piled out of the car. "You're actually here.
"Just look at you — look at you," said Aunt Lillibet, first to Mr. Barker, then to Mrs. Barker, and then to Will and Sara. "Come in — come in. We've been waiting for you. I told Fred you were coming and he's so excited ..."
Aunt Lillibet shooed them all through the front door and into the hall, and before Sara had a chance to ask who Fred was, she heard a scritch-scratching on the floorboards. She heard panting and snorting and yelping, and suddenly a huge yellow dog came bounding through the dining room, heading straight toward them.
"Look, Fred, they're here," trilled Aunt Lillibet. "I told you they would be, and they are."
But Fred kept on running, past Mr. Barker and Mrs. Barker, and even Will. He spun around, skidded on the scatter rug, and put his giant paws on Sara's shoulders, pushing her down, down, down onto the floor.
"Fred, sit, sit, and show some manners," called Aunt Lillibet.
Sara screamed. She started to cry, with big gulping sobs and little squeals mixed in.
Fred wagged his tail. He showed his pointy white teeth and licked Sara's face with his long red tongue.
Sara felt the warm, wet slobber. She saw his dark eyes looking down at her. She screamed again.
"He's only trying to say hello," Aunt Lillibet said, clapping her hands. "Here, Freddie. Here, doggie."
But Fred gave Sara's face an even bigger lick. He breathed his hot breath on her neck and did a kind of dance with his giant yellow paws.
Sara screamed her loudest scream ever. She saw her mother and brother and Aunt Lillibet looking at her. She saw her aunt pull the huge animal away from her and felt her father scoop her up in his arms almost at the same time. "There, there," Mr. Barker said. "It's all right now."
"Poor baby," said Mrs. Barker, patting her on the back. "That was scary, I know. But you're okay."
"He didn't bite her or anything," said Will, but even he reached out and gave Sara a friendly poke on the shoulder.
"Fred's sorry," said Aunt Lillibet, brushing the hair out of Sara's eyes. "Fred says he only wanted to play." And with her other hand she scratched the dog behind his left ear.
Sara looked all around. She looked down at the dog now sitting quietly at Aunt Lillibet's side. Then she buried her face in her father's shoulder and said, "I don't like dogs. I don't like dogs forever."
* * *
During the rest of the visit, Aunt Lillibet kept Fred outside when Sara was inside, and inside when Sara was out. Even when they all went out for a walk, though, or to the ice cream store, Sara thought about Fred and how he was back at the house waiting for her. And every time she closed her eyes, she saw his giant paws and his pointy teeth and could almost feel his hot dog breath against her neck.
It was after her visit to Aunt Lillibet and Fred that Sara began to insist on crossing to the other side of the street if she saw a dog coming toward her. It was after the visit that just seeing a picture of a dog began to make her feel clammy and cold all over.
It was from that time on that Sara began saying, either out loud or just under her breath, "I really don't like dogs forever."
Who Is Harrington?
When Mr. Willis, who lived next door to Sara's family, decided to move to an apartment, he put a blue-and-white FOR SALE sign in his front yard and pots of red geraniums on the porch steps. He washed the windows and cut the grass that didn't quite need cutting yet and even edged along the sidewalk with an electric edger he borrowed from Mr. Barker.
One afternoon Sara sat on her porch and watched as Mr. Willis snip-snip-snipped at his bushes, turning them into fat round green balls. It gave her a weird-all-over feeling that the fact that he was moving away didn't make her even a little bit sad, especially since he'd lived there for as long as she could remember. He's all right, Sara thought, and always says "Good morning" or "Good afternoon." But that's all he says, never anything else, like "Is that a new bike?" or "How was your Christmas?" Besides, every Halloween he turns out all the lights in his house, gets in his car, and drives away — and doesn't come back till the trick-or-treaters are home in bed.
"Kids would be nice," said Sara, as she and her mother stood at their window on a Saturday morning and watched a man and woman go in to look at Mr. Willis's house. "A girl for me and a boy for Will. Or maybe only a girl, just my age, and then she could hang around with Cindy, Jessica, and me. Or even a baby'd be okay and then when I got older I could babysit it."
"Kids would be nice," agreed Mrs. Barker. "We'll keep our fingers crossed."
Over the next six weeks Sara watched old people and young people, one-at-a-time people and entire groups go in and out of the house next door. And then one day, when she and Will came home from school, there was a red board attached to the FOR SALE sign, with the word SOLD in big white letters.
"Who bought it?" Sara asked.
"Bought what?" asked Will.
"The house. Look!"
Will shrugged and fished in his pocket for the key to unlock the door. "Somebody, I guess," he said.
"Yeah, but, somebody who?" said Sara as she dropped her backpack on the table and went to stand at the front window. She pressed her nose against the glass and stared at the sign, dreaming of the children who just might be moving in.
"I see the house sold," said Mrs. Barker when she came in from the school where she taught kindergarten.
"I see the house sold," said Mr. Barker when he came in from his job at the cable company.
"Yes, but who to?" said Sara. "I really need to know."
"Don't worry," her mother said. "We'll find out soon enough. Next time we see Mr. Willis, we'll just ask. Okay?"
But the trouble was, Mr. Willis seemed to have become invisible. When everybody in the Barker family left in the morning, he was still in his house. When the Barkers came home, Mr. Willis was still at work. They didn't see him picking up his newspaper in the morning or getting his mail or watering his geraniums. They didn't see him sweeping the sidewalk or carrying in groceries from the store.
Then finally, a week and a half after the SOLD sign had gone up, Sara and her mother were out front one day just as Mr. Willis was getting into his car.
"Oh, Mr. Willis," Mrs. Barker called, "we've all been wondering who bought your house."
"Harrington. The name is Harrington," said Mr. Willis, and he started his engine and drove away.
A New Neighbor
Mr. Harrington?
Mrs. Harrington?
Big or little kid Harringtons?
Sara had fretted about these things ever since Mr. Willis told them the name of the person who'd bought his house. But Mr. Willis never told them any more than that, and then one day he finally moved away.
"It's not fair," Sara said, as the moving van with all Mr. Willis's belongings in it pulled out from the curb. "He could've told us who was moving in next door. I mean, are there kids, and how many, and how old. All the really important stuff."
"So now it's the myyyyssssterrry family," said Will, stretching the word mystery out in his creepiest voice. "The myyyyssssterrry Harringtons, and maybe they're really vampires or ghouls or monsters, and Mr. Willis knew it and didn't want us to find out, and that's why he —"
"That's enough, Will," said Mrs. Barker. "I'm sure they're perfectly nice people, whoever they are, and we'll meet them soon enough."
Soon enough wasn't really soon enough for Sara, and she began to watch for clues.
One afternoon, when she came home from school, there was a blue car with flower decals along one side parked in front of the house next door. There were lights on in the cellar and in the garage, and Sara settled down on her own front porch to watch. She watched and she watched, until finally the phone rang and she had to run inside to answer it. When she came back, the lights were out and the car was gone.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Next-Door Dogs by Colby Rodowsky. Copyright © 2005 Colby Rodowsky. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Who, Me?,
More about Sara,
Fred,
Who Is Harrington?,
A New Neighbor,
Next-Door Dogs?,
About Max and Jake,
Cookies and Jump Rope,
What the Dogs Were Saying,
Sara to the Rescue,
A Very Quiet House Next Door,
Welcome Home,
About the Authors,
Also by Colby Rodowsky,
Copyright,