Dear Mr. Trump,
Please don’t get rid of the Department of Education*. Let this be one campaign promise you don’t follow through on. Hopefully, these last few days have whetted your appetite for reading ‘simple stuff,’ because you are so busy: however, it is good to take out 30 minutes a day to exercise, to meditate, or to read. And, if 30 minutes is all you have, there are some great children’s books out there!
Like The Boxcar Children: The Mystery at the Dog Show (#35), by Gertrude Chandler Warner (Albert Whitman & Company, 1993, 121 pages, $4.99)
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You might like the Boxcar Children series better than the book about Harry (Harry, the Homeless Puppy) that DogEvals wrote about recently, since there are two boxcar boys. Henry is 14 and Benny is 6, while sisters Violet is 10 and Jessie, 12. Violet loves everything purple and Benny loves to eat!
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The kids always get along, even if they are sisters and brothers. Plus, they always solve the mysteries which will stupefy even you! This series is one that even adults will enjoy. And, you can read one in half an hour – say, on Air Force One. Just tell the press corps that you have some crucial reading to do, and then come back relaxed and ready to spar with them!
The Alden children live surreptitiously in a boxcar after they lose their parents because they believe their grandfather is a crotchety old geezer (anyone you might know?) but he really isn’t. He is lovable and when the children finally consent to live with him, he has their old boxcar moved to the backyard to serve as a playhouse.
Mystery at the Dog Show may remind you of Tug of Love, the Puppy Patrol book about a dog show, too. I can’t decide which one I like best but DogEvals’ readers would love to know which one you and Barron like best.
Disappearing dogs, polka-dots popping up all over – on dogs, on ties, on dresses - a champion golden retriever staying with the boxcar children, the first annual Greenfield Dog Show, a missing assistant, Great Danes and English Bull Terriers, sore losers, a poodle with a striped haircut, tattooed dogs, and a cat? At a dog show?
If you want to see how all these loose ends get tied up, that’s what reading is for!
And it’s fun – you get to create the pictures in your mind.
Tomorrow: More Boxcar Children!
Caveat: You can probably find this book at your local public library. Or try a used-books store.
*according to Jenna Johnson, Washington Post, 17 July 16
