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In this series, children’s author Victoria J. Coe answers readers’ most frequently asked questions.

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Check out this OUTSTANDING hyperdoc created by superstar teacher Bobbi Hopkins!

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Check out this OUTSTANDING hyperdoc created by superstar teacher Bobbi Hopkins!

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Student activities for individuals, pairs, or groups based on the book FENWAY AND HATTIE by Victoria J. Coe (Putnam/Penguin, 2016). Suitable for grades 3, 4,…

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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Create a Fenway and Hattie Obstacle Course!

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Create a Fenway and Hattie Obstacle Course!

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A. FENWAY AND HATTIE (Putnam 2016)

A dog named Fenway and a girl named Hattie move from their apartment in the city to a home in the suburbs where everything is different. And while they both face problems, you only get Fenway's side of the story because the whole book is told from his point of view. So readers have to figure out what's happening from Hattie's side of things, which I think/hope makes it super fun to read!

FENWAY AND HATTIE AND THE EVIL BUNNY GANG (Putnam 2017)

In this first sequel, both Fenway and Hattie struggle with friendship triangles. And even worse, a neighbor's pet bunny - who may or may not be part of the evil gang who destroyed the garden - threatens to come between THEM!

FENWAY AND HATTIE UP TO NEW TRICKS (Putnam 2018)

Hattie's magician Nana is coming to visit and Hattie wants to learn her own magic tricks to impress her. But when Fenway gets hurt, she starts playing tricks on HIM! Poor Fenway begins to wonder if he can still trust his beloved girl...

FENWAY AND HATTIE IN THE WILD (Putnam 2019)

Fenway and Hattie are excited to go on a group camping trip as part of a back-to-school tradition. But as they meet all the new kids and dogs, they find that some of them are not very nice. And when there's trouble at their campsite, they realize that surviving the wild might be as tough as wanting to fit in.

A. I've always been fascinated by the idea that there are at least two sides to every story. From the time I was in elementary school, I LOVED reading books told from different perspectives or multiple perspectives. It's so cool to realize our own perspective isn't the only one out there and there's no "one way" to make sense of the world.

Having said that, I didn't think I could write a book like that because it would be too hard. But I decided to pursue the idea of writing from a dog's POV when our own dog freaked out as we were moving, and I started to wonder what was going through his mind.

Turns out that my fear about its being too hard was very well-founded! But like my main character, I never give up. Happily, two years and four major rewrites later, the manuscript that became Fenway and Hattie finally emerged.

A. How long is this blog?!

Really, I usually feel like I'm trying to write with both hands tied behind my back. There are SO many things about humans that animals - even those who live with people - don't understand or that wouldn't register with them.

So the challenge is to create scenes that most readers will be able to figure out from clues. It's kind of "show, don't tell" to the extreme.

And then, all the usual elements of writing fiction still apply - both the animals and humans need to have problems and story arcs along a relatable theme like love, jealousy, trust, or how to be a good friend, and the story needs to come to a satisfying conclusion. It's a lot like making a really complicated puzzle!

A. So many things! I've heard over and over that the Fenway and Hattie books strike a good balance. The stories are so fun and funny and lively that they easily engage those on the younger end of the middle-grade range, while the inference aspect and of course the humor make them appeal to older readers, too.

Plus, kids love dogs. And Fenway's a pretty loveable dog!

A. From the time a story idea sparks to the time it's completely finished, I never stop thinking about it. I do set daily goals for myself and I also like to mix them up. I find that variety stretches my creativity. So sometimes I'll go for a certain number of pages each day; other times I'll set a timer and write for a certain number of minutes.

I also like to bring my laptop on the subway or to places where I know I'll have to wait like airports. It sure makes the time fly!

A. My favorite part of writing is getting to the end. And yes, that's a serious answer! Getting the whole story out of my head and onto the page is an amazing feeling of accomplishment. Plus, it's so gratifying to see my characters end up where they need to end up. I'm like a proud mama!

My favorite part of being an author is visiting elementary schools. So much of writing is solitary - even if I'm writing on a crowded airplane. I just love getting out and connecting with readers, listening to them, feeling their energy - it's always the best day ever. I might get even more out of school visits than the kids do.

A. I have a couple of projects in the works right now. Too early to know if they will become books someday, but I'm working my tail off to make sure it happens!

A. Fenway and Hattie was a Global Read Aloud book in 2017, and I'm always excited to hear that teachers are reading it aloud and having lots of great discussions about POV and inference.

Today, Fenway and Hattie is a popular One School, One Book, and a Read To Them "Sweet Spot" selection. You can find out more at ReadToThem.org, and if you do choose my little pup for a community read, please let me know!

Many teachers and librarians have asked me if Fenway and Hattie is coming out in Spanish, and now I can finally say YES! It will be published in paperback by Penguin on 12/31/19 and is available for preorder now. All the info is posted at victoriajcoe.com/news.

Almost everything you could ever want as well as many things you didn't know you wanted can be found at www.victoriajcoe.com, and on the Fenway and Hattie resource padlet, padlet.com/victoriajcoe/FenwayAndHattieResources. Seriously! There's 25-part series of writing videos for all ages, book trailers, activities and games including write about, breakout.edu, and buncee, interviews, podcasts, complete school visit info, a "how-to" for adapting #booksinthekitchen for your classroom using flipgrid, and of course, news and book ordering information.

If we're not already connected, I hope teachers and school librarians will consider staying in touch by signing up for my periodic newsletter where I share news, special offers, secret info, and contests. Last year, two classrooms won the chance to name characters in my new book! Find the sign-up form at: https://bit.ly/2taKLsA

I love hearing from educators, parents, and readers! Aside from my mailing list and victoriajcoe.com, you can find me on twitter or instagram @victoriajcoe, and on my web series with Elly Swartz, #booksinthekitchen at youtube.com/booksinthekitchen. Let me know what you're up to!

I'm so in awe of all the educators and librarians who nurture and inspire kids every day. You are changing lives and making the world a better place. Thank you for allowing me to be part of the great work you do. You are my heroes!

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A. FENWAY AND HATTIE (Putnam 2016) A dog named Fenway and a girl named Hattie move from their apartment in the city to a home in the suburbs where everything is different. And while they both face problems, you only get Fenway's side of the story because the whole book is told from his point of view.

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Reading FENWAY AND HATTIE? Use these questions to talk about perspective (with younger or older students).

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Reading FENWAY AND HATTIE? Use these questions to talk about perspective (with younger or older students).

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Check out The FENWAY AND HATTIE Song lyrics by Matthew Griffin

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Check out The FENWAY AND HATTIE Song lyrics by Matthew Griffin

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Sing the Fenway and Hattie Song with Erin Willis

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Sing the Fenway and Hattie Song with Erin Willis

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0:00 / 1:53•Watch full video

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The science behind your canine queries and mutt mysteries!

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The FENWAY AND HATTIE Classroom Guide is a great resource for teaching POV

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The FENWAY AND HATTIE Classroom Guide is a great resource for teaching POV

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NEW! Play Fenway & Hattie Read-Aloud BINGO!

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NEW! Play Fenway & Hattie Read-Aloud BINGO!

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Print & handout these bingo cards to your group of 10 or fewer. Cross off words you hear. First one to 5 in a row wins!

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Play the Fenway & Hattie GAME on a Mac or PC

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Play the Fenway & Hattie GAME on a Mac or PC

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Help Fenway find out what's new in the Dog Park with clues from his doggy point of view

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If you want to play the game offline, you can download the game for Mac or PC with a parent or teacher's permission. This zip file contains 2 items; a game file and a data folder. To play the game, unzip the downloaded file, and pick the location you want to save the game.

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Learn to draw Fenway from this student tutorial

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Learn to draw Fenway from this student tutorial

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Huge thanks to superstar teacher Wendy Wakeman for sharing!

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Watch this amazing student and learn how to draw the character Fenway from Victoria J. Coe's Book, Fenway and Hattie.

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How a Dog Actually "Sees" the World through Smell

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How a Dog Actually "Sees" the World through Smell

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Even though smell is the most direct of our senses and the 23,040 breaths we take daily drag in a universe of information - from the danger alert of a burning odor to the sweet nostalgia of an emotionally memorable scent - our olfactory powers are not even mediocre compared to a dog's. The moist, spongy canine nose is merely the gateway into a remarkable master-machine which can detect smells in concentrations one hundred-millionth of what we humans require to smell something, and then transmute them into immensely dimensional and useful information about the world. So magnificent is the dog's olfactory brawn - including the ability to sniff out skin, breast, bladder, and lung cancers with an astounding degree of accuracy and to literally smell fear - that to our primitive human perception it appears like nothing short of magic.

How that neurobiological magic happens is what cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz - who heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College but has also produced a canon of invaluable insight on how we humans construct our impressions of reality - explains in this short animation from TED-Ed, based on her illuminating book Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (public library):

In the book - which also gave us the curious psychology of why a raincoat traumatizes your dog - Horowitz delves deeper into the impressive olfactory powers of canines, pointing out that the paltry six million sensory receptor sites in our noses are vastly eclipsed by the two to three hundred million in a dog's nose. Not only do canines have manyfold more of these sophisticated information-processing units but they also have far more genes than we do dedicated to the coding of olfactory cells, as well as more kinds of those cells wired to detect more varieties of smells. Horowitz writes:

We humans tend not to spend a lot of time thinking about smelling. Smells are minor blips in our sensory day compared to the reams of visual information that we take in and obsess over in every moment.

[...]

Not only are we not always smelling, but when we do notice a smell it is usually because it is a good smell, or a bad one: it's rarely just a source of information. We find most odors either alluring or repulsive; few have the neutral character that visual perceptions do... As we see the world, the dog smells it. The dog's universe is a stratum of complex odors. The world of scents is at least as rich as the world of sight.

But at least as remarkable as the dog's olfactory neurocircuitry - and as superior to our primitive human version - is the physical act of sniffing itself:

Few have looked closely at exactly what happens in a sniff. But recently some researchers have used a specialized photographic method that shows air flow in order to detect when, and how, dogs are sniffing... The sniff begins with muscles in the nostrils straining to draw a current of air into them - this allows a large amount of any air-based odorant to enter the nose. At the same time, the air already in the nose has to be displaced. Again, the nostrils quiver slightly to push the present air deeper into the nose, or off through slits in the side of the nose and backward, out the nose and out of the way. In this way, inhaled odors don't need to jostle with the air already in the nose for access to the lining of the nose. Here's why this is particularly special: the photography also reveals that the slight wind generated by the exhale in fact helps to pull more of the new scent in, by creating a current of air over it.

This action is markedly different from human sniffing, with our clumsy "in through one nostril hole, out through the same hole" method. If we want to get a good smell of something, we have to sniff-hyperventilate, inhaling repeatedly without strongly exhaling. Dogs naturally create tiny wind currents in exhalations that hurry the inhalations in. So for dogs, the sniff includes an exhaled component that helps the sniffer smell. This is visible: watch for a small puff of dust rising up from the ground as a dog investigates it with his nose.

Horowitz puts the gaping mismatch of abilities in pause-giving perspective:

We might notice if our coffee's been sweetened with a teaspoon of sugar; a dog can detect a teaspoon of sugar diluted in a million gallons of water: two Olympic-sized pools full.

Inside of a Dog is an endlessly fascinating read in its totality. Complement it with Mary Oliver's impossibly wonderful poems about dogs and this sweet animated ode to what dogs teach us about the meaning of life, then redeem some of your human sensory dignity with the not entirely unimpressive science of how our own sense of smell works.

For more treats from TED-Ed, see the science of why music benefits your brain more than any other activity, how to spot liars, and why bees build perfect hexagons.

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How a Dog Actually "Sees" the World Through Smell

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Even though smell is the most direct of our senses and the 23,040 breaths we take daily drag in a universe of information - from the danger alert of a burning odor to the sweet nostalgia of an emotionally memorable scent - our olfactory powers are not even mediocre compared to a dog's.

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Leading "A New Place" inference/POV writing activity with students

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Leading "A New Place" inference/POV writing activity with students

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What's it like to be a dog? Listen to this imagination activity

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What's it like to be a dog? Listen to this imagination activity

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Print out lined dog bone paper for student writing

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Print out lined dog bone paper for student writing

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F&H BINGO! A great activity for the whole family!

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F&H BINGO! A great activity for the whole family!

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Courtesy of Warwick School District, PA

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Have you read FENWAY AND HATTIE? Do you like secrets? Solve these clues & check out Fenway's SECRET PAGE!

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Have you read FENWAY AND HATTIE? Do you like secrets? Solve these clues & check out Fenway's SECRET PAGE!

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The Home Page of Children's Author Victoria J. Coe

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...And only readers who figure out the password can enter!
Now, I'd LOVE to tell you what's on the SECRET PAGE,
but then it wouldn't be a SECRET. RIGHT???
So instead... Here are some clues to help your students
guess the password:

1. It has something to do with what's on the SECRET PAGE

2. It is located on Page 5 of FENWAY AND HATTIE

3. It is the last TWO WORDS of the 1st paragraph: "I warned Hattie that her treats were ____ _______."

4. It is all lower case, with a space between the TWO WORDS

5. It has no punctuation

What do you think is on the SECRET PAGE?
What do you think the password is?
When you've got it, click the button below,
enter the password, and ENJOY!!!

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And only readers who figure out the password can enter! Now, I'd LOVE to tell you what's on the SECRET PAGE,but then it wouldn't be a SECRET. RIGHT??? So instead...