Fire Dog

by Kristin S. Everson, William G. Bill Haynes (Illustrator)

Overview

A puppy sneaks out of a pet shop in a big city. He has many adventures as he meets people, hoping that one of them will be able to tell him his name. The vintage artwork gives children a glimpse into a world very different from that in which they live today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781039153660
Publisher:	FriesenPress
Publication date:	09/29/2022
Pages:	44
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.12(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 6 Years

About the Author

Kristin S. Everson, born in Savannah, is a life-long resident of Georgia. She earned a master's degree in elementary education and trained as a Reading Recovery teacher. During her 30 years as an educator, working with students from kindergarten through junior college, her favorite part was helping students improve their reading skills. After retiring from teaching, she spent 9 years as project editor for a Christian publishing company. When Kristin visited The Ashantilly Center and saw the artwork for Fire Dog, she knew the story needed to be written. It was her privilege to put into words the story that artist Bill Haynes had so eloquently told decades earlier through his art.

Editorial Reviews

2022-12-05
In Everson’s debut picture book, a tiny, fuzzy puppy tells the story of how he took an adventure in the busy city and learned his name.

A young pup, in a basket with his brothers and sisters in a pet shop, doesn’t know his name. Customers call him “So Cute” and “So Frisky,” but they call his brother that, too. He decides to sneak out of the pet shop to find out his real name for himself. On the busy streets of the big city, he has several strange and sometimes-scary encounters until he’s rescued by a firefighter who gives him a distinctive name. The charcoal and colored-paint illustrations by the late Haynes are decades old, with brown spotting on several pages that gives them a unique feel. The author first saw them during a 2016 tour of the Ashantilly Center, Haynes’ former Georgia home that’s now a historic landmark; he’d created them while in art school in the 1920s for a never-completed children’s book project. Everson’s background as an educator is evident in the book’s backmatter, in which she engagingly tells of how she created a story for the pictures; she also highlights several illustrations and clearly explains how they depict aspects of life in the city setting.

Never-before-published illustrations come to life in a tale of a rescued canine.

Kirkus Reviews