The Puppy Project

Pets, Inc. #1

by Jennifer Armstrong

Carrie and Jenny and their best friends start a pet-sitting business to earn enough money to buy the lovable puppy Caledonia

Genres: Realistic Fiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1990

About the author

Jennifer Armstrong learned to read and write in Switzerland, in a small school for English speaking children on the shores of Lake Zurich. The school library had no librarian and no catalog – just shelves of interesting books. She selected books on her own, read what she could, and made up the rest. It was perfect. As a result, she made her career choice – to become an author – in first grade. When she and her family returned to the U.S. she discovered that not all children wrote stories and read books, and that not all teachers thought reading real books was important. Nevertheless, she was undaunted. Within a year of leaving college she was a free-lance ghost writer for a popular juvenile book series, and before long published her first trade novel, Steal Away, which won her a Golden Kite Honor for fiction.

More than fifty additional novels and picture books followed, and before long she also tried her hand at nonfiction, winning an Orbis Pictus Award and a Horn Book Honor for her first nonfiction book, Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. In late 2003 she will travel to the South Pole with the National Science Foundation to do research for a book on ice.

Reviews

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two sisters try to convince their parents to let them have one of their neighbour's puppies by proving they can be responsible for taking care of it, and paying for it's needs themselves. Along with two friends, the girls form their own business - Pets, Incorporated - to help neighbours with odd, animal-related jobs to earn money.

This is a cute book. There's not much in the story that would 'date' it badly (aside from the prices), the plot is still one that kids today can sympathize with, and I think it would still be entertaining to readers today.