Tale of a Scaredy-Dog Read online

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Text and illustration copyright © 2018 by Deborah Zemke

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Zemke, Deborah, author, illustrator.

  Title: Tale of a scaredy-dog / Deborah Zemke.

  Description: New York, NY : Dial Books for Young Readers, [2018] | Series: Bea Garcia ; 3 | Summary: “Bea Garcia loves art, especially when she gets to draw pictures of her dog, Sophie. When Sophie runs away after an encounter with the neighbor’s cat, Bea has to find a way to bring her home again”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017045648| ISBN 9780735229389 (hardback) | ISBN 9780735229396 (paperback) | ISBN 9780735229402 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Dogs—Fiction. | Lost and found possessions—Fiction. | Neighbors—Fiction. | Drawing—Fiction. | Hispanic Americans—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Readers / Chapter Books. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / School & Education.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.Z423 Tal 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017045648

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For all the kids who commit acts of bravery every day

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Sophie’s Illustrated Dictionary of Dog

  Chapter 2: Sophie’s Secret

  Chapter 3: Worse Than Homework

  Chapter 4: Into the Monster’s Lair

  Chapter 5: Monsters Have Pets, Too.

  Chapter 6: Searching for Sophie

  Chapter 7: ¡Perdido! Lost Dog!

  Chapter 8: Nightmare on Woodlawn Street

  Chapter 9: The Great Cookie Trail

  Chapter 10: Sophie Saves the Day!

  Chapter 11: Woof!

  Sophie’s Illustrated Dictionary of Dog

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  SOPHIE’S ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY OF DOG

  Author, noun: someone who writes a book, article, or anything

  Here’s the author of Sophie’s Illustrated Dictionary of Dog. Yep—a dog. Not just any dog, though. It’s my Sophie, the smartest dog in the world.

  Here she is holding a pencil. Sophie loves pencils. She doesn’t love to write with them because paws are not very good for holding pencils. My new almost best friend Judith Einstein told me why.

  That’s a fancy way of saying that paws are not very good for holding pencils. Sophie does love to chew pencils, especially the outer wood part.

  The gray inside writing part makes her sick.

  I love pencils, too, only I don’t usually chew them. I usually draw with them.

  This is me, Bea Garcia.

  I draw pictures of EVERYTHING. Here’s Sophie chasing a stick in our backyard.

  Here’s Super Sophie chasing a stick in outer space.

  I write words with pencils, too. I’m writing the words and drawing the pictures for this book, the one you’re holding in your hands.

  I’m also writing the words that Sophie tells me for her dictionary.

  That’s a fancy way of saying I’m writing the words that Sophie tells me.

  JUST KIDDING! Sophie doesn’t really speak English—or Spanish—or any other human language.

  She does understand some human words.

  Other words she only understands when she wants to.

  Sophie speaks Dog.

  Woof means everything—yes, no, up, down, why, here, there, no way. It all depends on how she says it.

  When Sophie calls me Woof she means it as a compliment.

  I’m Sophie’s human. She has other humans, like my little brother, the Big Pest, but I’m the only one who understands EVERYTHING she says.

  Sophie doesn’t just say Woof. She talks with her tail, too.

  See? Here she’s saying . . .

  I learned Sophie’s special tail language by drawing her.

  Right now Sophie’s saying . . .

  Here’s why. This is Bert.

  He’s a monster. Really.

  He scares my little brother and my not-so-brave-but-really-smart dog, Sophie.

  Bert lives next door in the house where my best friend, Yvonne, lived until she moved a million miles away to Australia.

  Bert doesn’t scare me. He makes me mad. He calls me names.

  Lately he’s been calling me . . .

  Einstein tried to make me feel better.

  But compliments are nice and Bert is not. Getting a compliment from Bert would be like eating ice cream made out of onions. Even if you put a cherry on top, it would taste awful.

  Einstein and I sit next to each other in class. She knows everything. Well, almost everything. She doesn’t know monsters.

  But Bert is very real.

  That’s my mom.

  I’m not sure my mom understands monsters, either.

  That’s true if you had superpowers, like Super Sophie, the world’s smartest AND bravest dog.

  Drawing is like a superpower because you can draw EVERYTHING. You can draw what really happens, and you can draw what you WISH would happen.

  See? Here’s Sophie standing up to Bert and being nice, too.

  *In Dog that means Please go away.

  Here’s Sophie really. Paws may not be good for holding pencils, but they’re great for running away from scary stuff.

  Here’s Sophie at the top of the crab-apple tree in our backyard. She runs fast, fast enough to get away from Bert. But now she’s too scared to come down.

  Chapter 2

  SOPHIE’S SECRET

  Biscuit, noun: a cookie for dogs often shaped like a bone

  Sophie loves biscuits more than anything except peanut butter cookies.

  That’s why Sophie isn’t scared of Fireman Dave even though he’s riding a big noisy fire truck. Fireman Dave smells like biscuits.

  Einstein says . . .

  That means they can smell a million times more than we can.

  I’m not sure how that works, but I know that when Sophie smells biscuits she smells love.

  Here we all are, her family, giving her biscuits and love. Me, my mom and dad, and my little brother, the Big Pest.

  But really, we’re her second family.

  Here’s her first family, her dog family. Left to right are her mother, father, brother, and sisters.

  As you can see, they were a pretty terrifying pack, especially if you are the smallest and named Weasel.

  So now you know Sophie’s secret. She was the runt of the litter, which means that not only was she the smallest, she was the way smallest, the puniest pup in the pack. That’s why she got the name Weasel.
r />   I was the littlest in our family, too, when I picked her to be my puppy. That was before the Big Pest was born.

  I didn’t pick her because she was the smallest but because she came right to me and said . . .

  I understood right away that she was saying . . .

  See how her tail is down and scared?

  On the way home we thought of new names for my new puppy.

  Nothing seemed right until . . .

  *That means YES! in Dog.

  Sophie grew up and isn’t puny anymore. She’s not huge, either. She’s just the right size to curl up beside me in bed.

  She still gets scared of things like trucks and vacuum cleaners.

  And Bert. Of course with Bert she has good reason to be scared. He doesn’t smell like biscuits. He smells like onions.

  Chapter 3

  WORSE THAN HOMEWORK

  Chew, verb: to bite, munch, chomp, crunch, gnaw, and nibble

  I’m not afraid of Bert, but there’s no way I’m going to his house.

  I went there a million times when it was Yvonne’s house but not once since Bert moved in.

  I’ve never been invited, and I wouldn’t go even if I was. Not even if Bert asked nicely which he didn’t and wouldn’t and couldn’t. His house probably smells like onions.

  Here are Sophie and me on our way to Bert’s house. It wasn’t my idea. It was my teacher’s, Mrs. Grogan. She said it was homework.

  But homework is work you do at home, and this is work I have to do at Bert’s house.

  Here’s Bert on his way to my house.

  Here’s why we had to go to each other’s houses. In class our assignment was to interview another student about their life.

  It would have been fun if I could have interviewed anybody except him. Even Walter the bunny would have been better.

  I begged Mrs. Grogan to let me interview Einstein instead of Bert.

  But Mrs. Grogan didn’t budge. So here’s my interview of Bert:

  All of which is untrue. I know for a fact that Bert has a mother. She even looks like him if he was tall and pretty and his hair was combed and he didn’t scrunch up his face like a monster and call me names.

  Here’s Bert’s interview of me:

  Bert scribbled things I didn’t say. But even if I hadn’t crumpled up the paper you still wouldn’t have been able to read it because his writing is so bad. You can imagine what Mrs. Grogan thought about our interviews.

  It’s not fair! Can you imagine what my little brother might say about me? Bert doesn’t have a little brother, at least not one that I’ve seen.

  When I got home I made my mom promise not to let the Big Pest answer any questions.

  Then I made sure the Big Pest couldn’t talk.

  Just kidding. I didn’t really put a Band-Aid over my little brother’s mouth.

  But I did give my mom this list of correct answers.

  And I made her promise not to let Bert into my room. Bert has been on my front porch and in the crabapple tree in my backyard. But he has never been inside my actual house.

  Mi casa NO es tu casa, Bert, which in Spanish is like saying STAY OUT!

  Chapter 4

  INTO THE MONSTER’S LAIR

  Lair, noun: a wild animal’s resting place

  I’m not scared of going to Bert’s house because I’m not scared of Bert. Einstein says monsters are imaginary, so that means Bert is imaginary, too.

  Besides it’s really Yvonne’s old house. It’s just the same except now there’s a fence all the way around the backyard. And there aren’t any flowers on the porch, and the front door is painted yucky green instead of bright red.

  There isn’t really a Beware of Monster sign in his front yard, but there should be.

  I used to look out my bedroom window and see Yvonne’s window. We waved good night to each other every night.

  Now the curtains to her bedroom are closed, which is good because it would give me nightmares to see Bert’s face the last thing before I went to sleep.

  I’m taking Sophie with me to Bert’s house.

  She didn’t want to go, but I told her she would be better off with me at Bert’s house than at our house with Bert.

  *In dog that means Do you promise?

  I didn’t tell Sophie what Einstein told me.

  Cookies may not be healthy, but they can be helpful. Here we are, walking past Bert on the sidewalk between our houses.

  See how Bert just disappeared?

  We walked up to the porch and rang the bell.

  Here we are eating cookies in Bert’s kitchen.

  It doesn’t look like a monster’s kitchen, does it? A monster wouldn’t have pretty curtains. Bert’s mother is as nice as Bert is awful. She answered the first question without me even asking.

  Sophie thought I should tell Bert’s mom the truth—that Bert and I aren’t friends. Sophie even wanted me to tell her that we used our superpowers to make Bert imaginary. Instead I asked the second question:

  Prepare yourself for the next picture.

  This really is Bert’s room. I know it’s so dark you can’t see much, but that’s probably a good thing. Be glad that I can’t draw smells because it smells worse than onions. Bert’s hobby, whatever it was, was making me gag. You can imagine how Sophie felt with her super-sniffer nose.

  Bert’s mom must have thought it smelled bad, too, because she opened the window.

  I WISH I hadn’t asked.

  Chapter 5

  MONSTERS HAVE PETS, TOO.

  Pet, noun: a tame animal kept for companionship and pleasure

  Big Kitty was big, but she was definitely NOT a kitty.

  She was a monster! An orange furry beast with glowing eyes and . . .

  MONSTER paws!

  Sophie didn’t run. She FLEW out the window.

  The orange monster flew after her . . .

  and they both disappeared.

  Where did they go?

  Sophie came.

  Big Kitty came, too, chasing Sophie.

  Bert’s mom and I ran downstairs and out to the backyard.

  Big Kitty chased

  Sophie

  up and

  down,

  down and

  up . . .

  and

  DOWN.

  Sophie came down, flying through my arms and out the gate.

  We went flying after her, but none of us could run as fast as Sophie.

  She raced next door to our backyard where the world’s only tree-climbing dog jumped into the crabapple tree . . .

  followed by Big Kitty.

  Everybody ran out to see what was happening.

  Sometimes it’s impossible to be nice AND stand up for yourself.

  But while I was standing up for myself Sophie got down all by herself.

  She skittered away as fast as she could, down our driveway to the sidewalk.

  Sophie ran around Max Pettigrew’s wagon and . . .

  through Mrs. Ginwalla’s flower garden.

  She got to the corner . . .

  but didn’t stop.

  I stopped.

  I looked for Sophie. She was gone. Out of sight.

  I didn’t stay. I stepped off the curb.

  Then my dad took my hand. We looked both ways and crossed the street.

  Chapter 6

  SEARCHING FOR SOPHIE

  Chase, verb: to tear after someone or something very quickly so you can catch them

  Here we are walking up Greenwood Street and down Blue Meadow Drive. I wanted to run but my dad held my hand tight. We crossed Red Leaf Lane.

  We trudged up Laurel Mountain Drive.

  We walked and walked. My dad kept hold of my hand and told me over and over . . .

  I wante
d to believe him. But when it started to drizzle, it felt like the rain was saying

  Who was that? The only person who called me Beatrice was . . .

  It started raining harder. Einstein ran into her house.

  She came back with an umbrella.

  It was the biggest cookie I’d ever seen. It smelled like peanut butter—my favorite, and Sophie’s, too.

  My dad and I walked up Flowers Street and over to Acorn Drive. All the way I kept thinking maybe Sophie is home, maybe Sophie is home. Einstein’s cookie didn’t smell like fish oil. It smelled like peanut butter. It smelled like home. Maybe Sophie is home.