Boston Globe–Horn Book Award Acceptance

nly a little while back my wife Carolyn and I were walking our dogs in the early morning. It was our son’s birthday. She said, “Thirty-two years ago today, Pete and I went through a bit of a struggle together.” Considering that Carolyn’s normal weight back then was about one hundred pounds, tops, and Pete weighed in at some ten pounds at birth, then it is true to say that there was a bit of a struggle going on. I know because I was there, worrying away.

I know that metaphors of birth and artistic endeavor are clichés, so before I hear collective murmurings of, “Oh, no, he’s not going down that path . . . is he?” I shall reassure you that I am not going down that road and call the whole thing off right here.

Nevertheless, it is true to say that some books-in-the-making are a bit of a struggle. Some are so much of a struggle they just don’t get made, or are put in a bottom drawer for spare parts at some later date. But “Let’s Get a Pup!” was a breeze. That book just wrote itself, and it is still writing itself in our ongoing relationship with our various dogs over the years.

Any one of our family could have written that book.

Look at our daughter Naomi at school back when she was fifteen and choosing her “work experience” option. There were her friends being placed in advertising agencies, in teen magazines, as photographer’s assistants, in commercial art studios and newspapers. And there was Naomi, for her work experience a willing helper at the local dog pound.

Carolyn was often on the afternoon bus that stopped to pick up Naomi on the way home, and on wet days Carolyn could smell her before she even got up the front steps.

At the end of the two-week period, each student had to write a report and fill in a questionnaire form. In response to the “equipment used” section of the form, her friends were writing such things as “Apple Mac,” “photographic enlarger,” and “word processor.” We eventually saw Naomi’s form when it was sent home for us to sign. Hers said: “rubber work boots and pooper-scooper.”

Naomi’s skills were lost, it seems, as she is now a musician living in London. But were she to meet your dog in any social situation, she would show all the tendencies of someone comfortable with dogs — and this is a dead giveaway — she would go down to meet the dog. That’s it, you can spot these people immediately.

The good old “bend of the knee.”

So you see that we have come from a long family apprenticeship of children and dogs. While the “children” part has now become “grandchildren,” the dogs part is ongoing. Just look at the lineup.

1. Bessy. A black kelpie pup, back in the late sixties when our daughter Naomi was still in her cot. We gave her away to a good home (Bess, not Naomi) when our Church of England landlord (showing little ecumenical compassion) put the rent up and we had to move to a large block of flats.

2. Hazel. A golden cocker spaniel pup. Too fast and beautiful to make old bones. Died as a result of a road accident, and still mourned.

3. Oscar. An aristocratic dachshund dressed from birth in a black dinner jacket and a brown waistcoat. He was nature’s gentleman and lived with us for many years through the seventies.

4. Rosie. An old Labrador with a leaky bladder and a dicky heart. We rescued her from the lost dogs home and she spent a good year with us steaming in front of the fire. She lives on in “Let’s Get a Pup!”

5. Sasha. A black, curly-coated retriever pup. Mothered by Rosie. She lived to the ripe old age of sixteen and traveled with us to live in Somerset in the U.K.

6. Buffy. Also from the dogs home, a victim of a broken home, we were told. He also made the trip to England with us some years back, and lived to a grand old age, too. You may know him over here as “Benny,” and he has a book all to himself. He told me the whole story of his life one day in my work room. I just wrote it all down and drew the pictures. Another easy birth.

On returning to Australia late last year, with “Let’s Get a Pup!” already finished, we once again went to the Rescue Centre run by the RSPCA over there. The scene was straight out of my book. Dogs were flinging themselves up the wire cages and calling, “Take ME, take ME.”

And do you know? We came away with . . . not one dog, but two: small white short-haired terriers with big black graphic patches on them (not unlike Dave in the book). And so to number . . .

7. They are a mother and daughter we called Midge and Maggie. Needless to say, they are living Happily Ever After with us. Midge, the mum, is somewhat bad tempered, but we think it is because of having one litter too many and being left with a (larger) daughter who has stayed on too long at home.

It happens.

Events in my own life are often tangled up in my stories. I write while fishing around in events from the past and the present. So there are these bits and pieces of my life, and other people’s lives. Things happen, and then I write about them. This time the book was written first and my life started imitating it. The agenda had been turned on its head. The books are starting to run the show.

It’s interesting because the book following “Let’s Get a Pup!” is all about fairies. So I sit and wait for them to appear. It’s just a matter of time, I expect.

Having spoken about the dogs, I would like to make a brief mention of the Mum and Dad in “Let’s Get a Pup!” Many people have complimented me and commented on my very “contemporary” family with Mum’s nose ring and their various piercings and all.

My own thoughts are that they might just have a hint, a breeze, of the sixties and seventies about them and blowing through their house. I sometimes try to imagine while making my characters what CDs they might have just outside the picture frame, our line of vision. I think Kate’s Mum and Dad might have the complete boxed set of Bob Dylan. And maybe many of the bootlegs as well.

Finally, as a kind of P.S., I would like to get back to birthdays, where I began.

Carolyn says that, sadly, no one in her family (her mum excluded) remembers her being born. Both her older sisters (although they hold her in great affection now) remember her brother, the only boy of the family, being born, but the third girl was unremarkable, it seems. “Not a ripple on the surface of the pond,” she said.
Well, she is more than a ripple to me. Her sensitivities and compassion are the inspiration for most things I have written. But she would claim no credit at all. I would claim that she made her own wave back then and continues to do so.

This is all a huge honor for me, and I want to thank all of you for making me feel so welcome over here. I would like to thank Deirdre and Lucy, designer and editor at Walker Books, for their invaluable help, and to Candlewick for making it all possible, and for the wonderful books that they make. I am in such good company there.

Thank you.