Shiloh Blog

Shiloh

The students in my Grade 5 class just finished reading Shiloh. We are wondering how you feel about Marty getting to keep you at the end of the story. Please let us know.
Thanks.

If I were a dog, I’d be licking your face all over!

I really love Shiloh

I am reading Shiloh and I love it! Dogs are one of my favorite animals and I really relate to the boy in the story. However, I have a few questions for you. I’m wondering, when is the story set, like what year? I think that it’s set sometime in the past but I don’t think it was set two hundred years ago.  Even though I’m only part-way through Shiloh, I really love it. I really want to know what happens to Shiloh and Marty! After I finish the first book, I plan to get the rest of the books on the series. You’re a really great author, and I think that your books deserve to be famous. But they are, in my heart.

I found the dog who inspired the Shiloh books in the 1980’s, so that’s the period I’m writing about in the four books.  I’m so glad you’re enjoying the first book.  Each book is like  continuation of the ones before it, so when you read the final book “A Shiloh Christmas,” it’s the complete story of the relationship between a boy, a dog, and Judd Travers.

Judd Travers

Why is Judd Travers mean?

Because he’s an angry man, and meanness is what he knows–the way his parents treated him when he was young.  Mean people are usually angry at themselves, but they take this anger out on other people.

Shiloh the dog

Why is Shiloh a dog?

What do you think it should be?

Why Shiloh?

Why did you choose the setting of Shiloh to be in West Virginia?

Because that’s the actual place, and the actual name, where I found the dog that inspired the series.

Marty and the right to live

How come Marty thinks all animals have the right to live?

How do you feel about it?   You’re right, in that Marty dislikes seeing animals caught or shot for food.  His own dad is a hunter, however, and the family depends on meat for many of their meals.  But there are other people who don’t eat meat at all and are vegetarians.  This is another example of how difficult it is at times to determine what is right and what is wrong.

 

 

Shiloh

What/Who inspired you to write Shiloh or just start writing at all?

I got my love for stories because my parents read aloud to us every night.

Your awesome book literature

What inspired you to write the fantastic literature book, Shiloh???

Finding such a dog in West Virginia, and wondering how I would go about getting it away from a cruel man if I were only eleven years old.

Shiloh

How old is Shiloh is Shiloh around 1-6? How old is Marty is he around 7-13? What kind of gender does Shiloh have? Is he a boy gender or a girl gender?

I imagine that Shiloh is around two years old–Marty around 11 or 12.  The dog I found in W. Virginia was female.  I made the dog male in the story.

Shiloh

how did you come up with the story.

A dog inspired it.  The rest I made up….