#sol23 March 18 Dav Pilkey

"Dad and I are reading Dog Man. It is SO good. So funny. Do you have any Dog Man books?" he asked with an urgency that I needed to address.  Clearly, he knows I am the Meme with lots of books.

"I do not have any of Dav Pilkey's Dog Man or Captain Underpants books, but I am pretty sure I have the first book Dav Pilkey wrote when he was still a teenager!" I said not sure if I still had that book in my collection of books.

For many years, I have used Dav Pilkey's story of being a reluctant reader (diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD) who talked too much and spent way too much time in the hallway writing stories with my graduate students as a way of encouraging looking at the "gifts" are students bring that are often overlooked.  I had not shared it with students because there is discussion of guns and violence even though the book, published in 1987 is really about finding peace.

I showed up at his house the next day, with the book, making me the Meme with lots of books!  My kiddo looked at the book and noticed how the name was spelled the same but the writing was different!

For the record, Dav Pilkey wrote and published his first book in 1986 and it was an award winner in 1987.  He  spent a lot of his childhood in the hallway because he talked too much. He was in college at Kent State and his publisher was hawking it at the NYS reading conference in 1987/88. As a literacy specialist, I found it an inspiring story  It was signed and now lives with a Dog Man fan  That makes me very happy.