K-9 (Knightley and Son)
by Rohan Gavin (Author)
Booktalk: London’s Youngest detective is back . . . Darkus Knightley, tweed-wearing, megabrained, fiercely logical thirteen-year-old investigator of the weird, was just getting used to having his private-eye dad back in his life. Then Alan Knightley went off radar again, leaving Darkus with the family mutt, a traumatized ex-police dog, as his only partner in crime-solving.
Now a mysterious canine conspiracy is howling for the attention of Knightley & Son. Shadowy trained hounds are attacking policemen at the full moon. Family pets are being mauled by a beast at a top London tourist spot. And two curiously alert canines seem to be watching Darkus’s house. No one is using the word “werewolf”-yet-but it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to work out that someone or something sinister is messing with the minds of London’s dog population. Will our intrepid father-son duo make it to the next full moon?
Snippet:
Downstairs, Tilly was eating a large bowl of cereal while Clive watched in silence from the opposite end of the kitchen table.
“Well . . . ? Who is he?” demanded Clive flatly. “This mysterious character on the two-wheeled bottle rocket.”
Jackie raised her eyebrows and continued emptying the dishwasher.
“A friend,” Tilly replied.
Six Traits Mini Lesson
Trait: Word Choice “Show, don’t tell” is the advice given to many writers, but you actually need to do both. A story needs to show and to tell. It’s a question of when. This passage begins a new scene. To let the readers know where the scene takes place, the story in this mentor text tells them with a single word:
Downstairs,
Then it tells us the character’s names and shows us what they are doing:
Tilly was eating a large bowl of cereal while Clive watched in silence
The sentence ends with more telling by adding another setting detail.
from the opposite end of the kitchen table.
Notice how the sentence alternates between showing and telling? Nouns TELL (setting details, character names) and verbs SHOW (actions and emotions).
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