It's a new school year and things haven't been great for Kat so far. She's being teased, and her best friend Maya is in a different class. But things start to look up when her Aunt Jenn opens a kennel and dog-grooming salon, and the girls are allowed to help out with a puppy named Bailey! But is the responsibility of watching someone else's pup too much for Kat and Maya to handle?
Our Thoughts:
This is such a cute book. Maya and Kat are best friends, and they love puppies more than anything in the world. They are so excited when they land a job in Aunt Jenn’s grooming business. They are assigned to Bailey, a yellow lab puppy.
The girls spend every afternoon playing with Bailey and having the time of their lives. On the last day they are sad it is their last day, and they are also tempted to break Aunt Jenn’s rules for Bailey. They finally decided to follow the rules.
They are rewarded greatly for following the rules!
Not only is this book very entertaining for young readers, it also teaches the important lesson of following the rules – no matter what. We are looking forward to additional books in this series.
Susan Hughes is a writer and editor, and has been writing children's books and articles for nearly twenty years. Susan has always loved writing. When she was in grade five and six, she and several friends had a writing club. They would gather with their poems and stories and read them aloud to one another. It was hard to wait for the responses! The group members always tried to say one thing that was positive, along with a constructive comment.
After finishing high school, Susan studied English literature at the University of Toronto. One summer, before her last year, she went to the job posting board and saw an ad: A children’s publishing house was looking for summer help from students. She answered the ad and was hired. She learned a lot that summer about writing, researching, editing, proof-reading, and working as a team. When she graduated, she worked for a year with the children’s publishing house – then began freelancing, working on her own to find editing and writing work. Soon she was getting calls asking her to do jobs such as write short articles for educational books. While she was doing this paid work, she was also working on her own ideas for books.
Susan writes both fiction and non-fiction. She is often asked to write a book on a topic she knows little about! So she does lots of research and briefly becomes an expert on that subject. Sometimes she works with experts, for example when she wrote about the Megalodon, the prehistoric shark, or Titanic. She often has to do research for her fictional works as well, for example, the Wild Paws series. Susan had to learn a lot about how to care for injured or motherless wild baby animals so that she could make the books realistic and factual, as well as entertaining.
Susan lives in Toronto in a tall house with a red door. She works in her living room at home. She opens the windows wide -- and sometimes the front door too! -- and sits where she can see the trees and the sunlight.
She lives with her three children, her boyfriend, and his two children. One of her favourite parts of the day is when all the kids come home after school and she gets to visit with them and hear stories about their day.
