The Author of "Dog of Knots" writes to us!

I got an e-mail from the Kathy Walden Kaplan, the author of Dog of Knots (affectionately called "The book where nothing happens" by our class) who saw our blog. I told her that our class was puzzled by the relationship between the main character in the book and an older boy, so I asked her about it. Here's her response:

Hi Amy,

We live in a strange world where kids are expected to associate only with other kids their exact age. Even having a friend a year older or a year younger doesn't happen very often. Before it was published, my manuscript was rejected many times. It was rejected because it was too pro-Israeli. It was rejected because the little girl didn't have friends her own age. It was rejected because she had a friendship with an older boy. "Very unrealistic," one editor said.

When I was nine years old, my best friend was twelve. The relationship between Mayim and Uri is based on my friendship with David who lived across the street in Sacramento. His mother loved having children in the house and that's where all the neighbor kids ended up every day after school and all day long during the summer. David was my best friend from the time I was six. He felt it was important that he should teach me everything he knew. I learned a lot about science from him. He was like an older brother to me. Then the summer I was nine he kissed me out under the tree in my front yard. I giggled.

My family moved away that fall to Salt Lake City. The year I was twelve and David was fifteen we wrote letters to each other for a year. I think he called it "going steady" and we went steady until the following year when he found a girl to really go steady with him. The year I was eighteen I moved back to Sacramento to get a job and save money for college (my folks were too poor to pay for college). The summer I was nineteen David and I dated. He was thinking about getting married, but he wasn't sure so he went off to walk the entire length of the John Muir trail (perhaps 1,200 miles) with his backpack so he could think about it. I put him on the bus with all his gear and I was pretty sure I wanted to go to college. Being a housewife didn't really have much appeal. I had been accepted to the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland and that's where I went in the fall. When David's path through the Sierras finally reached Yosemite he met a girl named Kathy who was working there for the summer. After he finished his long walk he went back to Yosemite and married her.

And there are more stories I have of unlikely friendships: when my daughter was nine, her best friend was our 12-year old neighbor, Erika, a little girl from Brazil.

I had a friend from Salt Lake City whose name was Pandora. I met her when she was 15 and her best friend was the nine-year-old boy who lived next door. They did everything together--homework, going to the library. They even wrote stories and plays together. They thought that the people who thought it was strange they should be friends were simply deprived.

Kathy

Thanks, of course, to all of you for the beautiful poster. Not only is it lovely, but the fact that you got together to make it is very touching.

Amy