Today, Kim Paras, Weekly Reader's Manager of Copy Editing, muses on why she loves spotty dogs.
"Not long ago, there lived in London a young married couple of Dalmatian dogs named Pongo and Missis Pongo."
And so begins the novel "The Hundred and One Dalmatians." I was thinking of that book the other day (for the uninitiated, yes, it was a book before it was a Disney movie), and I recalled that when I was in elementary school, I checked out that book every year from the school library. I am sure the school librarian wished I would feed my mind something else other than this tale of missing spotted pups, but checking out "The Hundred and One Dalmatians" from the Bolivar (Tenn.) Elementary School Library became somewhat of a ritual for me. From year to year, I knew where I could find the book--in the shelves against the back wall, about midway up and to the right. And its appearance was etched in my brain: It had a pale pink book jacket decorated with dogs on the front and paw prints padding their way up the spine, protected by a clear plastic cover. Looking back, I think the old hardback copy my school library owned may have been a first edition (1956, Viking Press).
For all the times I read that book as a child, I don't think I ever took notice of the author. The shame! So I decided to find out. The author, as some of you I'm sure could have told me, is Dodie Smith, of Lancashire, England. Smith attended what is now the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and began her career as an actor. Deciding that pursuit wasn't for her, she later worked as a toy buyer in a furniture store, where she would meet her future husband. Returning to the arts, she began writing plays, some of which were performed on Broadway in the 1930s and '40s.
Smith and her husband, Alex Beesley, moved to the United States during World War I (1914–1918). It has been said that Smith was homesick for England when, in 1948, she published her first novel, "I Capture the Castle," which is written from the point of view of a 17-year-old girl who lives in a deteriorating castle with her family. The book is essentially the diary entries of the protagonist Cassandra. It begins with this short, but inviting sentence: "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."
Sunday, May 3, would have been Dodie Smith's birthday. She was born in 1896. This writer who penned what would one day become a children's classic experienced tragedy in her own childhood. Her father died when she was a baby, and when Smith was a teenager, her mother died of breast cancer.
Smith died at age 94 in 1990. I think that in Smith's honor I will stop by my local library and check out "The Hundred and One Dalmatians," though I doubt it will be the copy with the pink cover that I so fondly remember. As for the Dalmatians whose adventures I will again follow? They were inspired by Smith's many pet Dalmatians, one of whom was named Pongo.