Things directly in front of a dog’s face are visible to him, but they are not quite as sharply in focus as they would be for us… . In fact, dogs might overlook small things right in front of their nose [because of the way their eyes are structured]. Inside of a Dog (Scribner, 2009; page…
This is my dog, Kerry. The character of Callie is a thinly disguised version of this little girl. She’s a pug mix—we think pug mixed with jack russell terrier. What do you think?
This is what a dog’s life should be, Shep thought as he raced after the Ball for a fifth time. Nothing but sky above and the wind in your fur and grass under your paws and a boy to play with.
One could say that dogs see the world faster than we do, but what they really do is see just a bit more world in every second. We marvel at dogs’ seemingly magical skill at catching a Frisbee on the fly, or following a rapidly bouncing ball… . [They can do this because] dogs actually…
Fun fact: The character of Shep was not always going to be a German shepherd. In my earliest notes, I thought my main character would be a pitt bull/boxer mix, or some other kind of young mutt. But as I thought more about my character, I knew he was a German shepherd. There’s something noble…
Dogs are not color-blind, as is popularly believed. But color plays a much less important role for them than it does for humans…. Inside of a Dog (Scribner 2009; page 128)
Below, the dogs marveled at how the Great Wolf sparkled throughout the night.
If there was ever a banner day in the history of children’s film (at least for my generation), it was November 17, 1989: The day on which both All Dogs Go to Heaven and The Little Mermaid opened on the big screen. It might tell you something that though I saw The Little Mermaid TEN TIMES in the theater, I don’t…
This month I’m blogging about what I’ve called “textual anomalies,” by which I mean the crazy stuff that writers are allowed to do in middle grade and young adult novels and pretty much nowhere else. Things like changing fonts to indicate a character’sdifferent states of mind or sticking a character’s artwork into the text or simply allowing a…
The title of this blog comes from the inscription on Hopkins Gate at Williams College, my alma mater. You walk through this gate and past these words after graduating—they set a pretty high bar for their graduates at Williams. The picture is of the coolest birthday present I have ever received (not to slight any…
Dayna Lorentz is the author of the DOGS OF THE DROWNED CITY series (Scholastic) and NO SAFETY IN NUMBERS (Dial).
I write because I have to; I write because I love to; I eat cupcakes because they’re there.