Karen Comer

Collecting Stories

The way of dog – book review

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… for this story is LOUD
it’s made to be growled
to be bellowed and roared to be
freed from your jaws to
travel Wind-wide and find those ears and
souls all waiting.

I adored this middle-grade verse novel, The way of dog, by Zana Fraillon. It’s told from the perspective of Scruffity, a dog born in a puppy farm. There are less than ideal conditions for Scruffity and his Manpup, the farm’s owner’s stepson. So both Scruffity and Manpup run away, hoping to find a new home with family by the beach. Along the way, Scruffity has all sorts of adventures and mishaps, and meets a few characters, both human and animal.

Because this story is told from Scruffity’s viewpoint, young readers will love his use of words – shoe-legs for humans, FlashingMetalBeasts for cars and Muncher for train. From the very beginning, Scruffity’s voice is strong and authentic. I felt like I had a much better understanding of our own dog, Cleo, after reading it!

And as you can see from the photo, Cleo clearly enjoyed the book as well!

Like all good verse novels, this one has lyrical language and rhythm which draw readers in. Readers 9-12 will find this book a page-turner, and it would be an excellent resource in the classroom. I’m thinking – lists of favourite words, poems about dogs, pictures about dogs, dog language, plus themes of belonging, home, safety, empathy, connection.

As Megan Daly and Alison Tait pointed out in their latest podcast, Your kid’s next read, it is important to know whether a dog story ends well. This one does. There’s certainly a few heartbreaking moments but – spoiler alert – Scruffity and his Manpup are reunited.

Late ideas

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When I’m in the flow of my writing, I feel like a magnet drawn to exactly what I need – a dictionary word, a Netflix episode, a twitter post, a conversation with a friend, anything. Connected to anything that will serve my story.

I’m not even consciously seeking ideas – they come to me.

Does this happen all the time? Absolutely not!

But when it does happen, it’s magic.

Last month, I deleted 5,000 words of my 25,000 word middle-grade verse novel, pulling out chunks of text – sometimes a line, sometimes a paragraph, sometimes a few pages. I had found an inconsistent element in my novel and drastic work was needed.

I knew I had to cut it out – and I’d known it for a while. I had tried to smooth it over, hide it with lyrical words, an exciting scene or two, a few magician’s tricks. Didn’t work.

I needed something else to fill the gaps – a little bit more than painter’s spackle. It had to look flawless, not tacked on.

I thought about my grade six protagonist, I thought about my grade six son. Nope, nothing.

One night, I made a quick leap from my desk to the kitchen to cook dinner in a hurry. Dinner never needs to be cooked early during lockdown – none of us are going anywhere. But my grade six son had an online talk with parental involvement on sex education.

I had left cooking too late – we ended up, the whole family, eating in silence, a laptop sitting on the kitchen bench, camera off, microphone off while my grade six son cringed as the educator talked about body parts and conception. His older siblings grinned, nudged him, made faces.

Body parts. Conception.

Goosebumps.

I could feel it on my skin. My grade six protagonist who has started her final year of primary school in a new school, now has to sit through sex education classes in her second week – with kids she doesn’t even know.

Goosebumps.

A leap from the kitchen after dinner back to my desk.

My words were enough not only to fill the gaps but hopefully make them so seamless that readers will never ever know they weren’t there originally.

A late dinner, a late idea. Connections.

Blood moon – the book and the event

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Reading a book called Blood Moon during the week there was a blood moon is definitely synchronicity!

The title of Lucy Cuthew’s young adult verse novel is so apt – it’s about British fifteen-year-old Frankie, who unfortunately gets her period during an intimate moment with a boy she likes. Frankie is a science nerd who works at the planetarium and spends every full moon night with her best friend Harriet in their old treehouse. The poem below comes at the end of the book, when Frankie and Harriet watch a blood moon.

We set up the telescope,

watching red

seep into the moon

at its edge….

Blood red,

impossibly lustrous,

suspended over us

three hundred and eighty-four thousand

kilometres

away.

The beauty of the blood moon

reminds me that

the universe is huge

and we are tiny,

but so lucky,

because we get to

witness its beauty.

On Wednesday night, my family watched the moon rise over our back fence. My phone pinged with messages from friends in Victoria and other states – photos of their russet-red moon risings.

So wonderful to watch a beautiful moon from your backyard.

Take care, Victorian readers – I hope you feel the moon’s calmness over the next week.