Right now, my daughter is in a phase of her childhood where she wants a dog.  We haven’t gotten one yet, but we have started reading stories about dogs.  We began with two classic stories from very different parts of the world: Japan and Scotland.  One story is about Hachiko, a Japanese Akita-ken, who faithfully waited for his professor-master at the Shibuya railway station in Tokyo in the early part of the century even after his master died at work and failed to come home on his usual train. The other story is about Bobby, a Skye terrier who abided by his police-man master’s grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh, Scotland for fourteen years.  Both dogs have been immortalized in books and films.

For children’s books on Hachiko, there is Hachiko Waits by Leslea Newman (illus. by Machiyo Kodaira), published in 2004 and Hachiko:The True Story of a Loyal Dog by Pamela Turner (illus. by Yan Nascimbene) also published the same year.  An Americanized movie version of the story is currently in the making called Hachiko: A Dog’s Story.   Bobby was made famous by Eleanor Atkinson‘s 1912 book Greyfriars Bobby and it is on the basis of this book that movies were made about Bobby — namely Disney’s 1961 Greyfriars Bobby and the more recent 2006 The Adventures of Greyfriars Bobby.  A more recent retelling of the story in book form is Ruth Brown‘s The Ghost of Greyfriars Bobby.

In addition to the books and movies, are monuments to the dogs themselves.  In Tokyo, Hachiko’s statue is a prime meeting spot at busy Shibuya Station (I’ve met many a friend there) and Bobby’s statue is in front of Greyfriars Bobby Pub not far from Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh.  If in your travels, you ever get a chance to go to these cities, you might want to visit these monuments to two very remarkable and loyal dogs.

We’ve just spent a week in the North-East of Scotland and although we spent most of our time tramping beaches and boggy hillsides, we did pay a visit to the bookshop in Dornoch, where Little Brother found Animal ABC: A Scots Alphabet by Susan Rennie and illustrated by Karen Anne Sutherland (Itchy Coo, 2002). We have all had great fun getting our tongues around the alliterative phrases like “crabbit crocodile wi clarty claes” – well, you’d be grumpy too if someone was throwing tomatoes at you and getting your clothes all dirty! – and we’ve learnt lots of Scots in the process. Little brother’s favorite is the “octopus in ooter-space”, planting the Scottish flag on the moon.

Little Brother was in fact intrigued that these are all real words, having stood corrected from his premise that “These are all nonsense words” like an Edward Lear alphabet – no, indeed! The situations the animals are put into may be humorous and “nonsense” but the language is genuine enough. In fact, the Itchy Coo imprint was created in 2002 to:

produce a burst of creativity in writing in Scots for children and young people, while also meeting the need for high quality teaching material in the language.

What a wonderful way to introduce Scots to young children – or indeed people of all ages!

We love exploring the world via alphabet books. I have brought many together in my Personal View for this Literacy issue of PaperTigers – this is one to add to the list; and if you can recommend others, do let us know here…

Another book I picked up was The Desperate Journey by Kathleen Fidler (Floris Books, 2002), which we have added to our pile of books for bedtime. This week, we drove along Strathnaver, which was one of the many areas subject to the Highland Clearances, so I think my two boys will get a lot out of the story. To quote from the back cover:

“Twins Kirsty and Davie Murray are forced to leave their home and travel across Scotland to Glasgow… Then the family are offered the chance to join an emigrant ship bound for Hudson Bay in Canada, and begin a perilous journey towards a new life in the Red River Colony.”

I’ll let you know more when we’ve read it…

This website, fronted by renowned British author Anne Fine, provides the most gorgeous range of bookmarks for children to keep their place in their bedtime story, as well as an extensive range of bookplates. They are all designed by well-known book illustrators and it’s just as well you can print then out individually as it would be impossible to have to make a single choice from among them!

One bookplate that immediately appealed to us, though, if I have to state a preference, is Mairi Hedderwick’s as we love her Katie Morag books. Katie is a feisty wee heroine, and enough of a tomboy to appeal to boys too. The illustrations bring the fictional Scottish island of Struay to life and the stories themselves make you laugh aloud, whether it’s Grannie Island using Grannie Mainland’s best shampoo to wash her prize sheep in Katie Morag and the Two Grandmothers; or the Big Boy Cousins being terrified by the ghosts of Castle McColl in The Second Katie Morag Storybook. Struay is based on the real-life Hebridean Isle of Coll: these lovely stories conjure up the very special way of life there, both through the narrative and the illustration, and are richly rewarding when read aloud.