Cammie McGovern's latest book is Chester and Gus.From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for Chester and Gus?Visit Cammie McGovern's website.
A: There was a wonderful in-class “therapy dog” in my son’s second grade classroom who all the kids loved. My son would come home with funny stories about how the kids included “Brody” in reading time and math and dealt him cards to play Uno with them.
When I finally asked the teacher about the dog’s background, she told me he had failed out of service dog training and she just brought him to school with her because he was too young to leave at home alone. He wasn’t really a “therapy” dog but she had to admit, he was so smart and so sensitive, he’d performed that job many times during the course of that year.
It got me thinking about all the amazing jobs dogs do for people and how connected they are to the sense of “having a job.” Watching Brody in action, it seemed very clear to me that Brody was continuing the work he was born to do but...[read on]
Writers Read: Cammie McGovern (July 2014).
--Marshal Zeringue