Books about Dogs?!

Remember this?
"...I also read "wilderness/adventure" books written by a man whose name I cannot remember. It starts with a K and is likely German or Scandinavian...I think the second letter in his name is a j..."

Thanks, Bibliodiva for supplying the missing letters: Kjelgaard. As in James Arthur (Jim) Kjelgaard.

Ring any bells?

How about books like Big Red, Irish Red: Son of Big Red, Kalak of the Ice?

What's frightening is that when I read the list of his books, I don't actually remember a single one. Did I really read a bunch of adventure books (most of which were about dogs)?!

Not only didn't I have a dog, as a kid I wasn't really an "animal lover" or especially inclined toward dogs. Besides Curly, the neighborhood stray my uncle fed, I'm not even sure I knew any dogs.

No wonder my mother thought I was odd...

Me? An Odd Child?

Someone in my life recently suggested that I was an "odd" kid. I beg to differ. In fact, I am convinced that I was pretty typical.

And here are some of the things I thought about then:

*naming triplet girls April, May and June
*changing my name to Jayne Dough
*aspiring to be the person in my town who got to name new streets

and the enduring question:
"Why do we say puppy dog and kitty cat but not baby person?"


So decades later I ask, are those the questions of an odd child?