Friday, January 6, 2012

an author [yours truly!!] makes mistakes with stories and dogs

Seeing your words in print is a thrill, but when you notice a mistake there's a kind of swirl in the stomach. Uh-oh. Some have been typos  -- I meant "west" instead of "east" when describing the Wasatch Mountains in The Great Railroad Race. Some are historical -- in The Winter of Red Snow young Abigail says that Mrs. Knox had a "baker's dozen" of children, which was eventually true, but the thirteen total came well after that winter in Valley Forge. And some of my goofs have been faulty logic -- in Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie a baby is born in a covered wagon during a river crossing. Readers pointed out that Hattie mistakenly refers to this baby as her niece, when in fact it's her cousin. Oops!

Fortunately these errors were corrected in subsequent printings. And on April 1st, Scholastic is re-releasing Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie with a beautiful new cover [click the title to see!], and Hattie's cousin will be properly named.

Bridget: French Bulldog, not Pug!
Now to my mistake with dogs. My last post was about our Pug friends, Bobby and Bridget. We had another friendly encounter, so I asked their owner why they didn't have tails like Pansy and Willis, our other neighborhood Pugs.

"They don't have tails," he answered, "because Bobby and Bridget aren't Pugs. They're French Bulldogs."

Oh! So here's another correction -- Bobby was unavailable for a new portrait, off chasing a tennis ball -- but here's Bridget again, the pretty little French Bulldog.



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