Before You Were Mine

by Maribeth Boelts, David M. Walker (Illustrator)

Overview

Adopting a shelter dog comes with unconditional love, but also many questions.

A little boy imagines what life was like for his new dog before he adopted him from a shelter. Maybe he had a boy who loved him, but the family had to move and couldn't keep him. Maybe he belonged to someone who didn't appreciate how mischievous puppies can be. Maybe he was treated badly.

But the most important thing is that now, he can be shown all the love he's been missing. Because this dog is home.

Winner of the Humane Society KIND Children's Picture Book Award and the ASPCA Henry Bergh Children's Book Award, this touching story celebrates all who support, care for, and adopt shelter dogs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780698140981
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	09/20/2007
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Maribeth Boelts and her family live in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Their second rescued dog, Dixie, lives happily with them.

David Walker lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Every dog he’s had has been rescued, but he’s always felt like the lucky one.

Editorial Reviews

Few will be able to resist the small, bright-eyed, brown-eared rescue dog that stars in Maribeth Boelts's Before You Were Mine…A splendid plea on behalf of all strays.
—The Washington Post

Elizabeth Ward

"Before you were mine . . . " wonders a little boy, "[d]id you live in a warm house with warm smells and a rug that was only yours? [Or were] you kept on a chain, with a dusty bowl and lonely sounds all around?" Never varying from this direct address, the little boy speculates about the life his dog may have led before being adopted from the shelter. He imagines happiness, cruelty, misfortune, neglect: "[Maybe] you ran away and they never heard that if your dog runs away, you look for him . . . until you find him." Softly framed pastel panels and vignettes depict a round, mustard-colored little mutt playing with an imagined boy, making puppy-mischief, alone and scared, before being taken to the shelter for "a meal, and a bath, and a bed of your own" before coming home with the narrator. Boelts's restrained text and Walker's affecting illustrations combine to pack a small wallop directly to the hearts of dog-loving children who will almost certainly give their pets an extra hug afterwards. A note on adopting a shelter pet follows this unabashedly emotional offering. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews

Children are likely to beg their parents for a trip to the shelter after reading this moving book.” — Booklist

“Boelts’s restrained text and Walker’s affecting illustrations combine to pack a small wallop directly to the hearts of dog-loving children who will almost certainly give their pets an extra hug afterwards.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Boelts does an outstanding job of exploring the adoption of a rescued dog from a shelter. The text and illustrations create moods that shift between poignant and blissful.” — School Library Journal

From the Publisher