Sparky!
Authors: Jenny Offill
Text copyright © 2014 by Jenny Offill
Jacket art and interior illustrations copyright © 2014 by Chris Appelhans
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, A Penguin Random House Company, New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Offill, Jenny.
Sparky / by Jenny Offill ; illustrated by Chris Appelhans.—First edition.
pages cm
Summary: A child takes a sloth named Sparky as a pet.
ISBN 978-0-375-87023-1 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-375-97023-8 (glb) — ISBN 978-0-375-98859-2 (ebook)
[1. Sloths as pets. 2. Pets—Fiction.] I. Appelhans, Chris, illustrator. II. Title.
PZ7.O3277Sp 2013
[E]—dc23
2012047196
The illustrations in this book were rendered in watercolor and pencil.
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For my parents, with thanks for a happy childhood —J.O.
For Liberty Bell —C.A.
About the Author and Illustrator
I
wanted a pet.
A bird or a bunny or a trained seal.
My mother said no to the bird.
No to the bunny.
No, no, no to the trained seal.
I asked her every day for a month, until she finally said, “You can have any pet you want as long as it doesn’t need to be walked or bathed or fed.”
I made her promise.
Then I went to see the school librarian.
Mrs. Kinklebaum (who knows everything in the world) pointed me to Volume S of the Animal Encyclopedia.
This is what I found:
My sloth arrived by Express Mail.
He was about the size of a mediumish dog, with a flat nose and a monkey face.