Dog Loves Counting Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  First Page

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2013 by Louise Yates

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, a division of the Random House Group Ltd., London, in 2013.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Yates, Louise, author, illustrator.

  Dog loves counting / Louise Yates. — First American edition.

  p. cm.

  Summary: “Dog loves his books so much that he can’t put them down long enough to go to bed! His friends help him count his way to sleep.”—

  Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-449-81342-3 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-449-81343-0 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-449-81344-7 (ebook)

  [1. Dogs—Fiction. 2. Bedtime—Fiction. 3. Books and reading—Fiction. 4. Counting—Fiction. 5. Animals—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.Y276Dod 2013

  [E]—dc23

  2012043219

  The illustrations in this book were created using watercolors.

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Owen

  Also by Louise Yates

  Dog Loves Books

  Dog Loves Drawing

  Dog loved books. He loved reading

  them late into the night and didn’t like

  to leave them for long.

  He knew he must sleep, but Dog

  just couldn’t drift off. He tried

  counting sheep, but they weren’t

  helping at all.

  “Perhaps there are other creatures

  I could count?” he thought.

  Dog reached for a book and began.

  The first thing Dog found was an egg.

  “One,” he counted, and the egg began to hatch.

  Inside was a baby dodo.

  “Hello, little one,” said Dog.

  He looked around, but

  the dodo was

  all alone.

  “I’ll look after you,” said Dog. “Together

  we are two. Number One, follow me–

  we must find Number Three.”

  They looked on through the book for

  the next creature they could count.

  “Number Three?” Dog called out.

  “Are you speaking to

  me?” said a sloth

  after a long silence.

  He waved very, very slowly.

  Dog counted his claws.

  The three-toed sloth wanted to help them find more

  numbers. He took his time, but together they

  continued on, keeping count all the way.

  “Four!” cried a camel. “One, two, three, four!”

  He counted out on his legs.

  “We are counting,” explained Dog,

  “so that I can fall asleep.”

  The camel hoped he could help. “In the desert

  where I come from, there are many more things

  we can count. Follow me!”

  “The next number is five,” said the camel. “There is

  a lizard, I think, called a five-lined skink.”

  They found him under a log.

  “Hello,” said the skink.

  “May we count your

  lines?” asked Dog.

  “Of course,” said

  the skink.

  And indeed there were five.

  “After five,” said the camel, “comes …”

  “Six!” said the skink

  with his mouth full.

  And as he untangled the fly, they quickly saw why.

  “Coooo-eeee!”called a raccoon, waving her tail.

  She had seven black stripes.

  “We’re on our way to the desert,” said Dog.

  “Can I come

  too?” called a

  spider. “Or am

  I too late?”

  “Just in time,” replied Dog,

  and they counted to eight.

  Number Nine was harder to find–

  he was dozing in his burrow.

  “Who’s in there?” called Dog.

  “A nine-banded armadillo,” said a voice.

  And when the creature came out, they saw it was true.

  He joined them too.

  “Nearly there,” said the camel.

  “What number’s next?” asked the armadillo.

  “Ten!” called a crab, and he scuttled about,

  waving each leg in turn.

  Dog was enjoying himself!

  He couldn’t wait to know

  more numbers.

  But when at last they did reach the desert, Dog was

  disappointed. There was nothing to count as far as

  he could see.

  “Don’t worry,” said the camel. “There are as many

  numbers here as there are grains of sand beneath

  our feet.”

  “Let’s all count together,” said Dog cheerfully.

  “Number One … ,” he began.

  But Number One was nowhere to be seen!

  “We’ve lost One!”

  cried Dog.

  “We must find him!”

  They were all very worried.

  So they split up and set off, searching

  in different directions.

  There were ten,

  then nine,

  then eight,

  then seven,

  then six,

  then five,

  then four,

  then three,

  then two,

  and then …

  … there was One.

  He was looking up at the stars.

  They all joined him, counting up and up,

  higher and higher and higher.

  Dog loves counting!

  “I could do this forever,” he said

  happily. The others agreed.

  When Dog woke up the next morning and looked

  at his books, he knew that friends and adventures

  were never far away–that was something

  he could count on.

  LOUISE YATES began drawing at a young age, and she hasn’t stopped since! As a kid, she drew pictures to go with the stories she wrote for school, and she knew, even then, that she wanted to become a children’s book illustrator. After getting her English degree from Oxford University and refining her art at the Prince’s Drawing School, that is exactly what she did. Her first book, A Small Surprise, was published by Random House in 2009. Dog Loves Books followed in 2010, debuted as a New York Times bestseller, and went on to win the Parents’ Choice Award. Dog’s second adventure, Dog Loves Drawing, came out in 2012, with School Library Journal calling it a book that “will inspire and entertain young artists and fun-loving readers alike” in a starred review.

  Louise Yates lives and works in London. You can visit her on the Web at louise-yates.com.

 

 

  Louise Yates, Dog Loves Counting

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