Write On! Radio - Little Rex w/ Gary Porter

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam welcome to the Right on Radio podcast. I'm your host, Josh Weber, and on this episode I talk with Gary Porter about his newest book, Little Rex, A Night at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Little Rex follows a small Boston terrier who's had a rough turn in life after being abandoned and left to fend for himself on the streets of Boston. Rex wanders into Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts on the Day of the Dead and encounters the ghosts of Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson as they set out on a journey through Concord's most historic landmarks. The book is a beautiful blend of historical fiction, ghostly adventure, and canine courage. It introduces young readers to some of America's most influential writers, but also explores universal themes of loyalty, loss and hope. It's heartfelt, smart and truly memorable. All this and more on the Right on Radio podcast. All right, Gary, whenever you are ready, you can begin your reading. [00:01:56] Speaker B: Thanks, Josh. I think thought I would read a little bit from the chapter where the ghosts and Rex are in the library. It's titled A Night at the Library, Dewey Decimals and I thought that was appropriate given that the COVID of the book shows little Rex in the library scared out of his wits because of the town constable there. So from that chapter, here was the town constable, flashlight in hand, staring me down. Lucky I was never one to feel self conscious. Still, I was petrified as to what my fate might be. My ghostly friends had slid between the walls, as all ghosts are capable of doing. Obviously forgetting that wasn't an option for a living Boston terrier. And they certainly couldn't come back in to rescue me now, not with the conquered cop staring me down. Well, I turned away from the man and made a beine into the stacks. This might be my best chance at an escape. It quickly turned into a game of hide and seek, with my hiding losing ground to his seeking. In and out of the stacks, I went one stead ahead of my seeker, courtesy of the Dewey decimals. I started in literature, the eight hundreds where me and my friends had gathered earlier. I turned the corner down into the first of many aisles of biographies, Those good old 921s next down the history aisles. Ancient history popping up first, and I'm thinking this is what I'm going to be. Ancient history. If the man holding the flashlight that could double as a club ever caught up with me, I was running out of room, nearing the end of the nine hundreds and nowhere else to turn. Out of breath, I turned back and figured I had no alternative other than to face the music. Well, in this case, face the Concord cop. What in the world are you doing in here, little fella? I remember reading that story a few years back about the cat left in the return bin outside a library and that cat becoming world famous. Dewey the Cat. I think that was his name. Is that what happened to you? Did someone who could no longer afford to feed you just dump you off in here? Well, I had no idea who Dewey the Cat was, nor did I really care to know. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I had no intention of joining my ghostly friends in the underworld. Nothing against those of the feline persuasion, but all I wanted to do was escape and rejoin my compatriots. Well, I'll tell you what he said. Let's head over to the jail and get you set up for the night. Tomorrow morning we can spread word around the village and see if we can't find your owner. Or if that's not possible, find someone who would like to adopt a cute fellow like you. I had never seen the inside of one, but the mere mention of the J word that is a jail sent chills up my spine. [00:05:07] Speaker A: That was Gary Porter reading from his heartwarming and imaginative new middle grade novel, Little Rex, A Night at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. The book takes readers on an unforgettable journey through American history, literature, and the enduring bond between dogs and their humans, all told through the eyes of a little Boston terrier with a big heart. Porter is a career educator and has taught at a number of universities, including Loyola University Chicago and University of St. Thomas. In addition to several textbooks, Gary has written magazine articles and three other books. Duffy, the Tale of a Terrier Town Kid, Reflections of a Midwestern Boyhood, and Griff, My Life as Drake's Top Dog. Gary and his wife, Melissa, live in Hudson, Wisconsin, where they support conservation and animal welfare organizations. Gary, welcome to Right on Radio. [00:05:58] Speaker B: Thank you, Josh. It's a privilege and honor to be here. [00:06:03] Speaker A: When you first started writing Little Rex, what was the first scene or vision that came to you, the one that told you this wasn't just another chapter in Duffy's World, your previous novel, but Rex's own adventure? [00:06:17] Speaker B: Well, the first scene that really came to me was up in Heaven, which are three chapters that take place there. And this story really is a prequel to Duffy to Duffy's Tale of a terrier. And so what came to me right away was the exchange that needed to take place up in Heaven between Rex, the literary Boston terrier, and his. His friend Duffy in Heaven. So really, it was the very opening of the book that set the scene that I knew had to, had to be the way that it started out. [00:06:52] Speaker A: Rex is a proud, practical Boston terrier and also protective of truth. Which single scene best encapsulates his personality to you, Gary? [00:07:02] Speaker B: I think Rex, he's a multifaceted character, no question. But I thinking this over, what strikes me about his personality is at the colonial end, when all of the four ghosts are gathered with him and he starved and he has to find some nourishment. So Louie takes the lead, Louisa May Alcott takes the lead and says, let's go down to the Colonial Inn and see if we can't find Rex some. Some food. He is starving and has been malnourished for a number of days. So, yes, Rex is a very proud, caring, very observant terrier, as readers will find out, but he also got pretty testy. He's a hungry Boston terrier. And so you see in this scene, when they're going down to the Colonial Inn, which isn't an old historic inn in the heart of Concord, Massachusetts, that is where you see many different parts of his personality. Again, this observant, caring part, but also one that needs to find some nourishment. [00:08:15] Speaker A: Yeah, his Rex's first dog narration is brisk and humorous, yet he slips into curator mode when quoting authors. How did you decide when Rex would crack jokes versus when he'd step back and let history carry the moment? [00:08:30] Speaker B: You know, I think, Josh, that came very naturally, that because there's so much history surrounding the town of Concord, Massachusetts, which readers will find out and learn more about. But it's just something that came naturally, that it made sense, as you said, for example, with the Old North Bridge, to let history kind of carry the moment, as you're saying. Another example of that is when the staunch abolitionist, old, as he sometimes called Captain John Brown, comes to town. And so there are instances like that which, yeah, Rex is cracking jokes and having fun with the ghosts, his four ghostly friends, but there's just natural times where it felt necessary to bring history in. And so that's what there are other examples, but I think of the shot heard round the world at the Old North Bridge. And then when the ghost of John Brown appears, this abolitionist, that it was just history that would carry the moment, as you say. [00:09:42] Speaker A: Throughout the events of the book, you stage quotation cameos from Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson. What was your method for sourcing, trimming and interweaving their real lines into the story. [00:09:59] Speaker B: I can tell you that the method involved a lot of research. And that research, I'd say there are two facets to it. Part of it was just reading many stories, books, particularly biographies, about these real people that lived in Concord, mass. In the mid-1800s. So it was that a lot of reading that. That kind of helped me tell their stories, but also a visit that my wife and I took a while back to Concord to do research and essentially walk the grounds, walk through Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and walk around Walden Pond and around the delightful village and kind of just absorb it all. So it was again, as you said, these guest appearances, the cameos that take place, that really helped tell the story. But how I wove those into the story was by frankly knowing enough about the characters and feeling like not that I lived their lives, but I knew so much about them. About how Louisa May Alcott love to run. She said. She said at one time I should have been or I was a deer in a previous life, the way that I love to run. And then I learned early on in my research that Henry David Thoreau was a saunter. He loved to saunter. And. And there was a method to the way that he went about it. And as I talk about in the book, Rex that he said, that was much more to my liking. He had these stubby little legs, and so for him, sauntering was his style. Let. Let Louisa May go ahead and run ahead like a deer. [00:11:52] Speaker A: Your Alcott, the way you depict her in the book is warm, kind, yet gently pedagogical. How do you find that balance so she reads like a living person on the page? [00:12:03] Speaker B: Well, again, I think to a large extent, I found the balance by learning and understanding more about each of the characters in Louisa May. And she's known throughout the book and as she was well known during her lifetime as Louis, it was just understanding her as just like all the characters, all four of them, multifaceted in terms of their personalities. Yes. And we may talk about Hawthorne a little bit later. He was brooding. He was more aloof than any one of the other characters, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. So I think it was just learning as much as I could about their real lives and then, you know, basically allowing them in many cases, with these built in quotes from the real authors, allowing them to tell their own stories. [00:13:00] Speaker A: Little Rex will delight, I think, and appeal to a lot of younger readers, but there are wings and layers for adults, too. There's literary illusions, historical quips, and even philosophical nudges. How conscious were you of writing for two audiences at once? [00:13:16] Speaker B: Well, I think was conscious of it because of my background. I think you mentioned at the outset in my introduction that I was a professor, college professor, and so I've always been one that likes to teach and bring in teaching moments. And I did that with the Duffy Tale of a Terrier book. Many teaching moments in that book. That book, Josh, wasn't specifically written for kids. My wife always likes to say it's for ages 8 to 80. But I found in that book as well as in this, I think because of my background, it's. It's always best been natural. The way that I write it is to engage the audience, whoever that audience might be, whether it's college students or in the case of Duffy Tale of a Terrier, that's had real appeal to probably third, fourth and fifth graders or whether it's for adults. I feel like, again, whenever you're writing, you find ways to engage the audience. So, yes, I think the Rex, Little Rex book will have appeal to. To not only kids to engage them and to have a love of history and literature, but also to appeal to adults who want to know more about our history, literary and historical of this country. [00:14:41] Speaker A: You just mentioned before that Thoreau saunters, but he also plays a flute and he coughs. He's very human. Can you walk us through your choice to include his fragility? So kids meet the person as much as the idealized poet and philosopher and naturalist we mostly associate with Thoreau. [00:14:59] Speaker B: You're exactly right. So many people, Josh, have the impression of Henry David Thoreau as a recluse, as a hermit. He went out to Walden and just disappeared. Well, nothing could be more further from the truth. Yes, he was there for two years, two months and two days officially. But he went into town. He went into town on a regular basis. He. He came in on weekends and ate with his family and had dinner. So again, like all these characters, there was a lot more to his personality. So how did I go about kind of telling more about his character and as you say, his fragility? It was through different facets of things that he did. He did regularly play a flute. And. And there's instances that are told when you read about his life and biographies, that he did that for the kids around the town of Concord. He regularly played the flute for them. So I thought, well, this is a natural. One of the ways that he will basically become a good buddy and a pal of Little Rex's is by playing the flute. And he does that a few different Times at least once or twice when, when Rex finds himself in trouble. So and then there is that I brought in. I decided to bring in a couple of different times some foreshadowing that Henry David Thoreau some of your audience may know died relatively young, much younger than any one of the other three characters. And it was incessant coughing that he had throughout his life. And eventually Sid died at a relatively young age. So I, I brought in a couple of different instances of that coughing to show that yes he was a living human being that coughed, played the flute, sauntered and all those different aspects of his life. I tried to. [00:17:00] Speaker A: To call attention to Emerson's Trust Thyself meets a stray streetwise independence in the character Rex. How did you keep self reliance from drifting into rugged isolation especially as community. By community I mean like the collective of the four authors literally materializes to guide Rex in the novel. [00:17:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really a good question that I wanted to talk a bit about that these, these Transcendentalists as they were known and they were the. The leaders particularly Emerson of that group in the mid-1800s. The idea as Emerson said in his is probably one of his most famous essays Self Reliance they were individualists and to as you said trust thyself. But then they. And they meet this streetwise little character, this Boston terrier names named Rex. And so there's this rugged isolation. Rex learned to be self reliant as he talks about. He's had to live on the streets of Boston almost his entire life after he was given up by his master. And by the way his master is interwoven throughout the story as well and has an important part in it as he is a book editor as readers will find out or that they may know from. From reading Duffy's tale. But yeah Rex is a very independent source sort those characters are because of their self reliance and so to speak but at the same time they learned how to get along and form community. In fact at least one of them Hawthorne lived at one time for a short while as part of a communal living experiment as were those were popular at that time in the mid-1800s. But yeah they, they find throughout the book they find ways that they need to. To work together and particularly to help Rex with food early on when said they end up at Colonial Inn and need to find him food. And I won't give too much away but there is a scene involving a witch from the Salem witch trials and that's going to take some cooperation that they can't just all go on and be on their own. And then, of course, out at Walden Pond, something happens out there that requires that they work as a team. [00:19:37] Speaker A: There's chapters like A Night, the Library, and the Old North Bridge that carry gentle lessons about history, ethics and belief. Was your goal to write a story that teachers and parents could share in classrooms, or did that educational layer appear naturally as the story evolved? [00:19:56] Speaker B: No, I think it was, I would say, pretty much a conscious decision on my part from the outset. As we talked about a little earlier in this interview from Duffy's Tale of a Terrier, there's a lot of pedagogy there. And again, I think that comes through because of my career as a teacher, being in the classroom all those years. So it certainly was a goal, I would say, from the beginning of it to this, to be something that could be shared by teachers in the classroom and. Or parents working with their. Their kids in the home. It was a goal that I wanted. This is, of course, historical fiction. I should make that clear, too. And so I wanted it to be a fictional. If you're going to have a talking dog, Josh, then yeah, most people would say that's fiction, Right. And of course, I talk at some point about kids especially decide needing to decide what they believe and what they don't believe is really true. So it is historical fiction. But I think that was the genre I wanted to use to try and enthuse young readers, especially about some of our history going back to the Revolutionary War and the shot heard around the world, as well as some lessons because of the Civil War. Listeners may not know that Louisa May Alcott had a short stint as a nurse during the Civil War in Georgetown in the Washington, D.C. area. So it was just something that I had a goal from the beginning to try and particularly get young kids enthusiastic about the history of our country and particularly our literary history with. With these characters being at the very forefront of that. [00:21:49] Speaker A: So I've asked about Emerson, I've asked about Alcott, I've asked about Thoreau. I need to ask about Hawthorne. Hawthorne arrives, sure, he's handsome. He's brooding and initially aloof, then opens with compact maxims about action and autumn sunlight. What was your compass for calibrating his arc for from cool to companionable? [00:22:11] Speaker B: Well, the way that I went about that you referred to, I think there's quotes throughout the book, as I've said, that are the exact quotes from all four of these famous conquered authors, who are, of course, are buried in Sleepy Hollow on Author's Ridge. So some of the Ways that I brought other kind of sides of Hawthorne or other than this brooding, aloof person which I, I make him out to be at certain times because he really is. When he comes up from the grave to, to join Henry and Louisa May and before Ralph Waldo appears, I, I paint that him in that light that he is somewhat brooding and aloof. But yes, through some of his quotes you referred to the autumn sunlight and so forth. There was that side of him that was more than someone, that was just aloof to everyone. And then another way that I brought that out, tried to bring it down, is with the one chapter where him and Rex are off on their own. He has a little bit of a issue with the very staunch abolitionist. Not that he is himself in any way in favor of slavery, but. But readers will find in a certain part of the book that he doesn't quite share the kind of drastic methods of say a John Brown. And the other authors, they're fine by that. But anyway, there's a part where Hawthorne and little Rex end up going off on their own and have this episode with one of the Salem witches. We'll leave it at that. But it's, it's in that episode that I decided this is a way to bring in another side of Nathaniel Hawthorne. One that has kind of a soft spot and a human side to him. [00:24:08] Speaker A: From the colonial inns rumored room 24 to the old manse window view down to the bridge, Concord feel is like a character unto itself. What's your favorite tangible detail you found on site in Concord that made it onto the page? [00:24:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. I love this question because as I said earlier, my wife and I went out and spent a few days totally absorbed in the town itself, the village. And by the way, some of your listeners and readers of the book may not realize Concord, Mass. Back in the mid-1800s was a village, classic New England village of about 2,000 inhabitants. And that's what just as an aside here for a minute, that's what so excited me. The more and more I started to not only read about the town, but also decided I wanted to write about it, was to think that a town of 2,000 would produce these world class writers who are. They're part of our literary history. So anyway, on that town tour of the village, starting one morning out at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and continuing on through two, three days worth of exploring every aspect of the town, including out to Walden Pond itself, Orchard House is where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. And of course I should mention, yes Rex was in the Duffy book and that was Rex's name in the book. The title Little Rex comes from Louisa May giving a nod to Rex. And by the way, Rex in Latin is king or ruler, which he was very proud to have found that out from courtesy of Louisa May Alcott. But anyway, she decided it ought to be Little Rex as a nod to her famous book Little Women. Well, one of the things we found out in and with a tour from Jan Turnquist, who is the executive director of Orchard House, and she took us to the room. There is a room on the upper level of Orchard House which is now a living history museum. And you see the desk over there in the corner of that room where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. So if you ask me the question what is the one most tangible detail from our visit on site to Concord that made it onto the page? It's. It's that room and that writing desk in the Orchard House. No question. [00:26:52] Speaker A: And I believe my last question for you, Gary, your note to young readers invites them to decide what to believe and what not to believe with ghosts and a talking dog on the Day of the Dead. What do you hope kids conclude about truth in historical fiction after Walking with Rex and Concord's literary luminaries you present in Little Rex? [00:27:12] Speaker B: Well, yes, I say it kind of jokingly about you decide what to believe and what not to believe because yeah, is there such a thing as a talking dog? Most of us I think would agree that dogs don't talk. But I think what I want young readers to take away from this is that you need to do your own research as a reader and some. And I'm hoping too that this little book will help instill in kids not just a love for reading but also a love of writing. That it will get them enthusiastic about doing research and doing their own writing. And so I'm hopeful that the message they take away from this is to use your imagination. And yes, this book was meant to be historical fiction, so it's fictionalized. But do your own research and if you're interested in this type of work to understand what's real and what you can use your imagination to do. So that's the plan with the book to install in readers love of history as I have and who knows, down the road as I explore future writing opportunities, we have dogs of our own that still need to tell their own stories. I'm intrigued by cemeteries by the way. So whether or not in another story or in a book, there may be some involvement in a cemetery it wouldn't surprise myself if that's what happens. [00:28:54] Speaker A: So in the closing pages, Duffy and Rex share a moment that feels like an ending and an invitation. Do you see more stories coming from this world? Could there be more knights in other historic places, other cemeteries? That's your plan right now? [00:29:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. I won't give too much more away, but as I said just a minute ago, our dogs, Daisy, Polly have since passed on and now Moxie still have their own stories that could be told. And I love writing stories about dogs. Two of my three previous ones had dogs in them and now this one. So yeah, I could see whether choosing a dog as a device, as a way to tell a story, maybe or maybe not. But as I said, I wouldn't be too surprised if a cemetery was involved down the road in another story. And I do like historical fiction, and I hope that comes through as people read the book, is that I think there's so much that can be gained for us as readers by historical fiction, that blend of what's real in terms of history with what you can embellish it with. [00:30:11] Speaker A: And that's our time with Gary Porter, author of Little Rex. A Night at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. A story where history, literature, and a little dog's courage come together in one unforgettable night on the Day of the Dead. You can find Little Rex wherever books are sold. Gary, thanks for joining us on Right On Radio. [00:30:28] Speaker B: Thanks so much, Josh, for having me. [00:30:31] Speaker A: And now this. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. A huge thank you to Gary Porter for joining us and for sharing the story behind Little Rex. You can can find the book wherever great stories are sold and we encourage you to leave a review, share it with others, and help spread the word about this charming tale. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to subscribe, rate and share the Right on Radio podcast. We have more great authors and inspiring stories coming your way. Sam.