"Strudel's Forever Home"

Martha Freeman is an author of books for children of all ages, including The Orphan and the Mouse, the First Kids and Chickadee Court mysteries, and The Secret Cookie Club: Campfire Cookies.

Freeman applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Strudel's Forever Home, and reported the following:

Strudel’s Forever Home is one of those books where the animals can talk to each other but not to the people. (Writers create universes. Universes have rules. Those are the rules in this one.)

On Page 69, Strudel is conversing with a pigeon named Johanna who is “surprisingly pretty, with lustrous gray feathers, brilliant red feet and a snazzy purple rainbow on her neck.” Strudel, cooped up on his little patio, has hailed Johanna in hopes she will give him the 4-1-1 on the stray cats that have been terrorizing the neighborhood.

Not being a feline fan herself, Johanna is quite willing to help and tells him just now greedy and cruel the cats really are: “They gobble that food then gobble up more – the pups, the chicks and the eggs from every nest. In their wake, they leave a trail of blood, only a bloody trail.”

(Johanna tends to redundancy.)

At the end of the section, Strudel watches Johanna fly over the fence and feels a “peculiar sensation,” envy for a creature that isn’t a canine. Also, he hopes that maybe he can recruit her to form an alliance.

Oh, and BTW, I love cats. But what would be the fun of writing, or reading, if you didn’t try to see the world from a vantage other than your own?

Visit Martha Freeman's website.

My Book, The Movie: Strudel's Forever Home.

Writers Read: Martha Freeman.

--Marshal Zeringue