Authors: Ellen Miles
Jack
For Beverly Cleary, with admiration and gratitude
Dear Kit Smithers,
My name is Lizzie Peterson, and I am in fourth grade. I am writing to you because you are my favorite author. Your books are the best. I have read almost all of them exsept
Islanders,
but my favorite one is
Mountain Girl.
It’s so exciting. My favorite part is when Sunny thinks she hears a bear in the woods.
I can tell that you like dogs because you put dogs in all your books and they always seem like real dogs, not book dogs, if you know what I mean. I love dogs, espeshally puppies. I have a puppy named Buddy. He is the cutest. My family even fosters puppies. That means we take care
of puppies who need homes, just until we can find each one the perfect forever family.
My family is:
— my dad, who is a firefighter
— my mom, who is a writter like you, only she’s a newspaper reporter
— my younger brother Charles (annoying)
— my youngest brother, the Bean (real name: Adam) (also annoying).
Lizzie leaned back from the computer to read over what she had written so far. Was it getting too long? No, it was good. Even Charles would probably say so. Charles was always writing letters. One of them, about a beagle puppy who was not being treated well, had even gotten published in the newspaper. But so far, letters had not really been Lizzie’s thing.
Lizzie’s thing was reading. Lately it seemed like all she wanted to do was read, read, read.
(And play with dogs and puppies, of course. That would always be her first choice.) And she especially loved reading Kit Smithers’s books. Kit Smithers wrote stories about girls Lizzie’s age who did cool things, like paddling canoes or surviving in the wilderness by eating roots and berries.
After she had read all six of the Kit Smithers books at the library, Lizzie had begged her mom to buy her three more, including a hardcover copy of
Mountain Girl
with beautiful illustrations. She’d gobbled those books up, too, and then started all over again. Finally, one Friday night after supper, she’d decided she just had to let Kit Smithers know how much she, Lizzie Peterson, loved her books.
Now Lizzie looked at the screen and started to write again.
I don’t have a real job, since I’m only in fourth grade, but I volonteere at the animal shelter
every single Saturday, and sometimes I help out at my aunt Amanda’s doggy day care. One day she had 37 dogs to take care of! I am very good at training dogs. I trained our puppy, Buddy, to sit, stay, come, sit up pretty (like, sitting with his front paws held up), shake, and fetch. Only, when he fetches, he doesn’t always bring the ball back and you have to chase him for it, which he thinks is a game, so he runs even faster. Buddy is brown with a white spot on his chest in the shape of a heart. He is a good boy and I love him.
Lizzie looked down at the floor, where Buddy was snoozing, curled up in a snug ball. First his nose and then his paws began to twitch, and Buddy let out a little snuffly half bark. Lizzie’s dad said that meant a dog was dreaming. Lizzie liked to imagine what Buddy might be dreaming about. Treats, probably. He sure did love those new biscuits Mom had bought, the ones that looked like
tiny lamb chops. Or maybe he was dreaming about chasing squirrels. Buddy loved to tear after the squirrels in the backyard, even though he never came close to catching one.
Lizzie wanted to pick Buddy up and hug him and kiss his soft puppy fur and stroke his silky ears. But he looked so content, asleep on the thick rug. She decided to wait. Maybe he would wake up by the time she was done with her letter.
Lizzie planned to draw some pictures on the letter after she printed it out. Maybe a horse, which she had just learned to draw. Her best friend, Maria, had taught her. Maria really loved horses, and she could draw them so they looked 100 percent real. So far Lizzie’s horses looked sort of like sock puppets, but she just needed more practice.
Lizzie finished the letter.
Please write back as soon as you can.
Yours sinserely, Lizzie Peterson, your #1 fan
She did spell-check and found a few mistakes, which she corrected. Then she printed out the letter. It filled a whole page! There wasn’t much room for horse drawings, so she drew dog paw prints and flowers all around the edges, using every color of marker she had. At the bottom, near where she signed her name, Lizzie drew a picture of Sunny, the main character in
Mountain Girl.
It came out so well she almost wanted to keep it, but then she thought of how impressed Kit Smithers would be.
She found an envelope in a drawer and wrote
Kit Smithers, author
on it. Then Lizzie realized that she did not know Kit Smithers’s address.
When she stood up, Buddy jumped up, too. His tail wagged, his eyes shone, and his ears were all perky. What a happy dog. Lizzie loved that about Buddy. He was always excited to see what would happen next. “We’re only going down to Mom’s study, that’s all,” she told him. Buddy didn’t care.
It was still an adventure. He charged down the hall in front of her.
Mom liked to work on her newspaper articles in the evening, while Lizzie and Charles did their homework and the Bean was in bed. Right now Mom was writing a long article about a man who ran a green building business. She had talked about it at dinner the night before. At first Lizzie and Charles had both thought that meant that the man built greenhouses. Or green houses. But it turned out to mean that he built houses that did not use as much energy as regular houses. Lizzie paused in the doorway to watch Mom tap away on her computer. How could anybody type so fast?
“Mom?”
Mom spun around on her chair and smiled at Lizzie. “Hi, sweetie! What have you got there?”
Lizzie held up the envelope. “I wrote a letter to Kit Smithers, but I don’t know her address.”
“I bet she’ll love getting a letter from you.” Mom
leaned back and stretched. “Bring me one of her books and we’ll see who the publisher is. We can send your letter to her publisher, and they’ll send it on to her.”
Lizzie ran to her room and found one of her other Kit Smithers favorites,
The Long Valley,
on her bookshelf. When she brought it back, Mom showed her the name and address of Kit Smithers’s publisher, right on one of the front pages. Lizzie was copying it onto the envelope when the phone rang.
Mom picked it up. “Hello? Oh, hello, Amanda. How are you?” She listened.
Lizzie waved. “Tell Aunt Amanda I said hi!”
Mom held up a finger. “What’s that? You have a puppy you want us to foster?”
Lizzie stopped writing. “A puppy? What kind? Where did it come from? Can we foster it? Please? Please?”
Mom frowned at Lizzie and made a “zip-the-lip” motion. “Tonight? Amanda, are you serious?”
Lizzie jumped up and down. “Say yes! Say yes! I’ll do all the work, I promise! A new puppy! Yay!”
Mom sighed. “Okay, Amanda. I guess if you’re that desperate, we can help you out. But only for tonight.”
“What kind of puppy? How old? Boy or girl? Why does it need a new home?” Lizzie peppered her mother with questions.
“Lizzie, Lizzie. Easy, there! I don’t know the answers to any of those questions, but we’ll both know soon. Aunt Amanda is on her way over right now. All she said was to get the crate ready, and to make sure Buddy is shut up in your room —”
“What? Why does Buddy have to get shut up in Lizzie’s room? And did I hear something about a puppy?” Charles appeared in the doorway. Buddy ran over to greet him.
“We’re getting a new foster puppy!” Lizzie couldn’t wait to tell her brother the news.
“We’re not necessarily fostering the puppy,” Mom told Charles. “Your aunt Amanda’s in a pinch because she has a homeless puppy on her hands and an obedience class to teach tonight. And as for Buddy, he only has to be shut up for a little while, when the new puppy first comes over.”
“Did you hear that, Buddy?” Charles bent down to pat Buddy. “It’s only for a little while. And we’ll still always love you best, no matter what.”
Buddy wagged his tail and licked Charles’s hand.
I know you love me! I love you, too.
Charles hugged Buddy. Then he and Lizzie walked their puppy down the hall and got him settled in Lizzie’s room. “He’ll be happy in here with his favorite toy.” Lizzie tucked Mr. Duck between Buddy’s paws.
“He likes Pooh better.” Charles offered a stuffed
bear to Buddy. Buddy grabbed Pooh happily and thumped his tail, leaving Mr. Duck facedown and forgotten.
“Told you so,” said Charles.
Lizzie gritted her teeth. Charles had really been bugging her lately. What a pest! But she had better things to think about: a new foster pup was going to arrive any minute. She gave Buddy a bedtime snack of two of the little lamb-chop biscuits. Then she and Charles went downstairs to find Mom and Dad in the kitchen, setting up the puppy crate. Lizzie had brought down her letter to Kit Smithers. She leaned it against the salt-shaker on the kitchen table so she’d see it the next morning and wouldn’t forget to mail it.
The very first time she had seen a puppy crate, Lizzie had thought it looked like a cage. She had thought it would be mean to keep a dog in such a small space. But by now, after her family had fostered so many puppies, she knew better. Lizzie knew that a crate was a great way to give a puppy
a place of its own, like a little cave where it felt safe and sound. She knew that a crate could help with house-training, since most puppies didn’t like to go to the bathroom where they slept, and that it could help with bad habits like chewing, because if a puppy was shut up inside his crate, he couldn’t get into tempting things like old shoes or the garbage.
Lizzie went to the hall closet to find the red flannel sheet the Petersons had used over and over again with different puppies they had fostered. She held it to her nose and took a big sniff. Even though they washed it between puppies, it always had that special, delicious puppy smell. She brought the soft old sheet to the kitchen and folded it up so it made a cozy bed inside the crate.
Charles had gone into the living room to round up a few puppy toys, and he tucked them inside the crate, too. Mom got out the dishes they used for foster puppies, and Dad filled the water bowl.
“What a team!” he said as he looked around the kitchen. “I think we’re all ready.”
As if Aunt Amanda had heard him, there was a knock at the back door, and she burst in, towed by a sleek, muscular brown puppy with a pure white bib and paws and a funny, squashed black face framed by floppy ears. His big brown eyes shone. He wagged his short stubby tail as he pulled the leash right out of Aunt Amanda’s hands and danced and pranced his way around the kitchen, greeting each of the Petersons in turn.
“Look at him! He’s all muscle. What a little tank,” said Dad.
“Jack! Slow down, buddy!” Aunt Amanda sounded exasperated, but she was laughing, too. Lizzie could see that it was hard not to laugh around this puppy. What a clown! He snuffled and sniffed at everything, reminding Lizzie of Pugsley, a naughty little pug the Petersons had fostered. But this dog was much bigger than a pug and had longer legs.
“Hello, Jack.” Lizzie squatted down to pet him. The puppy snorted happily and licked her face all over.
Hi! Hi! Hello! What fun to meet somebody new!
“Is he a boxer?” Lizzie asked Aunt Amanda.
Her aunt smiled and nodded. “Good guess.”
It wasn’t exactly a guess. Lizzie had practically memorized the “Dog Breeds of the World” poster in her room. But even though she knew what boxers looked like, she had never met one before. Jack was adorable! And he sure was a ball of energy.
“How old is he?” Charles sat down on the floor next to Lizzie so he could get his own face licked.
“Jack is about nine months old.” Aunt Amanda laughed as she watched the puppy climb all over Lizzie and Charles. “And he’s really a very good boy. Except . . .”
“Except?” Mom asked.
“Maybe it’s time for you to tell us why he needs a new home.” Dad raised an eyebrow at his sister.
Aunt Amanda checked her watch, then started speaking quickly. “It’s sort of sad. Jack just started coming to Bowser’s Backyard last week. I had a funny feeling about his owners. They seemed almost out of patience with Jack. They brought him to doggy day care every single day, even on the weekend, when they weren’t at work, and they were often late to pick him up. It was almost as if they wished they’d never gotten a dog. And sure enough, they just plain did not come to pick him up tonight. When I tried to call them, their phone had been disconnected. I drove by their house, but there were no lights on and there was a
SOLD
sign on the front lawn. I think they moved away and left Jack behind. They gave up on this boy.”
Jack tugged at Lizzie’s shoelaces, snuffling and grunting as he did his best to pull them right out of her sneakers. Lizzie felt so sorry for the puppy. “How could anybody abandon you like that?” She
pulled him into her arms for a hug. At first he wriggled and squirmed, trying to lick her nose and ears and chin. Then, as she patted him, he calmed down and snuggled in next to her with his head on her lap. He gazed up at her, wrinkling his forehead in a very worried way. His sad little face melted Lizzie’s heart.
Will you be my friend? Everybody else is always mad at me. They yell and yell. I need a friend.
“Aww, Jack. It’s all going to be okay.” Lizzie patted him some more. With one long sigh, Jack closed his eyes and fell asleep. Lizzie could tell that it had been a long day for the little pup.
Mom looked at Aunt Amanda. “So, what was the problem? Why were Jack’s owners out of patience?”
“I’ll explain it all tomorrow.” Aunt Amanda checked her watch again. “But I can’t stay another second. I’m already ten minutes late for
obedience class and my students are waiting. Just make sure to keep an eye on Jack all the time. He should definitely sleep inside his crate tonight, too. I can’t thank you enough for helping me out!” With a quick kiss on Jack’s nose and a wave, Aunt Amanda was gone.