“I’ve always wanted to publish a story about a service dog,” said Laura Numeroff, who can now check off that box on her career wish list. The creator (with illustrator Felicia Bond) of HarperCollins’s bestselling If You Give… series, teamed up with artist Lynn Munsinger on a new picture-book project, lending their talents to support a very worthy cause. Raising a Hero, the launch title of the Work for Biscuits series celebrating dogs with important missions, was released last month by Cleverkick, a Los Angeles company that has partnered with Canine Companions for Independence, a non-profit organization that provides assistance dogs to children, adults, and veterans with disabilities. The publisher will donate a portion of the proceeds of sales of the book to this group, which had a tangential role in Numeroff’s inspiration for the story.
The picture book, which introduces a service dog in-training whose young “puppy raiser” Sam teaches him basic commands he needs to learn for his future job, was co-created by Sean Hanrahan, founder and owner of Cleverkick. His brother Devin, who has cerebral palsy, for 10 years relied on the services of his beloved Golden Retriever-Labrador mix, Ellie, a Canine Companions service dog. After Hanrahan and Numeroff were introduced by a mutual friend three years ago and became friends, the author came to know Devin and Ellie (who passed away last year), and the two inspired the picture book’s story and characters. “You couldn’t help falling in love with Ellie,” said Numeroff. “She was a very special dog, and I miss her very much. She and Devin were wonderful together – and in fact I dedicated Raising a Hero to them.”
Years before Numeroff met this duo, the seeds of a story about a service dog were planted when she encountered a woman who was walking the aisles of Book Expo with a dog. “I’m a dog lover big-time, and this happened to be an Australian Sheepdog, which is a breed of dog that I also have had as a pet, and loved,” she recalled.
When Numeroff asked the woman why the dog was accompanying her to the convention, explained the author, “She told me she had just self-published a book about search and rescue dogs. The proverbial light bulb went on in my head, and I realized there are so many jobs dogs do that most people don’t know about. So I wrote a children’s story about a boy and a service dog. But after it was rejected a couple of times, I filed it away – until I met Devin and Ellie!”
A Passion Project Resurrected
In 2013, Hanrahan, who worked as digital media developer at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif. before establishing his own business in that field, launched Cleverkick as a holding company (it is now a publisher), to produce Numeroff’s new incarnation of her dog story, which became Raising a Hero. To finance the project, he launched a Kickstarter campaign that raised close to $35,000 over 36 days in January and February of this year. Subsequent fundraising garnered an additional $25,000, enabling Cleverkick to develop and print 10,000 copies of the picture book.
The pieces continued to fall into place nicely, Hanrahan reported. Munsinger, with whom Numeroff has created a number of earlier picture books, including the Jellybean series, agreed to create the illustrations for the book, and Hanrahan and Numeroff both tapped into their respective professional experience “to create, design, and produce the book. With the fundraising, and with so many people willing to donate their time and talents, we had all the elements we needed, and we were able to produce Raising a Hero – and to donate one dollar to Canine Companions for each book sold.”
For Numeroff, the book marked several gratifying “firsts.” She had never before written a book that required research, and enjoyed visiting Canine Companions to “attend puppy kindergarten sessions and watch puppy raisers in action, which was wonderful.” This was also, she reported, “the first time I’ve been involved in the graphic and design parts of a book. I had input into the colors, page layouts, and font decisions – and I’m a font-aholic. I loved doing all of that. And, of course, having Lynn – I call her my Steven Spielberg! –do the illustrations made the book that much more fun.”
Hanrahan noted that the response to Raising a Hero – from Numeroff’s fans, booksellers, and those involved in service dog training – has been very positive, and Cleverkick is in the process of establishing additional distribution channels for the book, which is now sold primarily online. The digital version will be released in December and will be available on Apple iBook and Amazon Kindle, and via the Cleverkick website.
Though additional Work for Biscuits installments are not yet in the pipeline, Hanrahan observed, “Laura and I certainly plan to do more books – there are so many great stories to be told. We’ll soon begin designing a digital app to share additional stories and educational resources focused on these incredible dogs and the people they serve. We really believe that this series is a great opportunity to show children and their parents that they can be a part of something very special and very important.”
Raising a Hero by Laura Numeroff, illus. by Lynn Munsinger. Cleverkick, $18.95 Oct. ISBN 978-0-9965518-1-6
