A Dog So Small (A Puffin Book)

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The youngest of four children of a flour miller and corn merchant, Ernest Alexander Pearce, and his wife Gertrude Alice née Ramsden, Philippa Pearce was born in the village of Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire, and brought up there on the River Cam at the Mill House. Starting school late at the age of eight because of illness, she was educated at the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge, and went on to Girton College, Cambridge on a scholarship to read English and History there.

A Dog So Small by Philippa Pearce | Goodreads

This is exactly how I felt. This was one of the most private stories I've ever read. Philippa Pearce gives us, the readers, this rare privilege of *seeing* inside young Ben's mind and heart to his deepest feelings and longings, to the extent that you feel it is not your place to pass that on other than to simply say, "READ THIS BOOK!" Puffin Modern Classics are relaunched under a new logo: A Puffin Book. There are 20 titles to collect in the series, listed below, all with exciting new covers and fun-filled endnotes. But after Ben spends the WHOLE book doing literally nothing except thinking about a dog of his own. He cries because this new dog, Brown, Is not the Chihuahua of his imagination. What a spoiled child! You've spent the whole book wanting a dog, and here you are, with a dog! And now you don't want it because its not the dog you wanted. My goodness. Where to start? I was originally going to give this book 3 stars but then I read the last chapter and I just lost all hope, but lets get to that later. I can't help but quote Elaine Moss, the editor who wrote the afterward in my Puffin publication of this lovely book. She gave the manuscript of this book to a nine-year-old boy named Charlie to read, after he finished reading it he said, "I loved the story, but I'm not sure if I'll tell my friends, because I don't want to have to talk about it with anyone."

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Nettell, Stephanie (2 January 2007). "Obituary: Philippa Pearce". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 July 2009. A Dog So Small' is about the inner life of a boy, an inner life that is more rel to him the the rumbustious life that is going on around him...." ~ Elaine Moss In 1951 Pearce spent a long period in hospital recovering from tuberculosis. She passed the time there thinking about a canoe trip she had taken many years before, which became the inspiration for her first book, Minnow on the Say, published in 1955 with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. It was a commended runner-up for the annual Carnegie Medal. It was adapted for television in Canada as a 1960 TV series with the original title, and for British television in 1972 as Treasure over the Water.

A Dog So Small by Philippa Pearce book reviews | Goodreads A Dog So Small by Philippa Pearce book reviews | Goodreads

Pearce married Martin Christie in 1962. They had one daughter, who became a children's author herself, as Sally Christie. [11] Martin Christie, who had never wholly recovered from being a Japanese prisoner of war, died in 1964. From 1973 until her death from complications of a stroke in 2006, Philippa Pearce lived once again in Great Shelford, down the lane where she was raised. [12] [13] Legacy [ edit ] Pearce wrote over 30 books, including A Dog So Small (1962), Minnow on the Say, (1955), The Squirrel Wife (1971), The Battle of Bubble and Squeak (1978) and The Way To Sattin Shore (1983). The Shadow Cage and other tales of the supernatural (1977), Minnow on the Say, Bubble and Squeak, and Sattin Shore were all Carnegie Medal runners-up. The Battle of Bubble and Squeak inspired a two-part television adaptation in Channel 4's Talk, Write and Read series of educational programming.

I thought this was a good story to teach children that what you expect is not always what you get however can still be just as enjoyible. Sometimes we may not end up with the very thing we've hoped for but what we do end up with can be exactly what we need. Ben had to learn this on his Journey when Brown was not the dog he'd cunjured up in his mind.