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Strongheart: Wonder Dog of the Silver Screen

Author Candace Fleming On Tour
Illustrated by Eric Rohmann
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For fans of Balto and other real-life dog stories, here's a heavily illustrated middle-grade novel about a canine movie star of the 1920s, dramatically told in both words and pictures by an acclaimed author and a Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator.

When movie director Larry Trimble travels to Berlin searching for his next big star--a dog!--he finds Etzel, a fierce, highly trained three-year-old German shepherd police dog. Larry sees past the snarls and growls and brings Etzel back to Hollywood, where he is renamed Strongheart. Along with screenwriter Jane Murfin, Larry grooms his protégé to be a star of the silver screen--and he succeeds, starting with Strongheart's first film, The Love Master, which is released in 1921. Strongheart is soon joined by a leading lady, a German shepherd named Lady Julie, and becomes a sensation.

Touching, charming, playful, and based on real events, this moving tale by Candace Fleming and illustrated by Eric Rohmann tells all about "the wonder dog" who took America by storm.

A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF 2018
A CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF 2018
 
On a farm between the Bavarian Alps and the city of Berlin, a carefree puppy named Etzel played in a sun-washed barnyard.
He chased the chickens, barking in delight at their squawks and flaps.
He tipped over his water bowl, splashing and sliding in sloppy-fun mud.
And he gulped down the last of his kibble, licking the bowl to shiny emptiness. 
At last, tired and full, he flopped onto the squirming puppies nestled in the curve of his mother’s belly.
 
His sister, Greta, nipped his ear.
His brother, Otto, yipped a complaint.
But Etzel just wiggled down between them and sighed.
His family. 
 
He had just closed his eyes, when—
“Here’s a big, handsome one,” a man’s voice boomed.
Rough hands tore Etzel away from his family and held him high.
The puppy whimpered. His paws flailed in the suddenly cold air.
“Look at those markings,” the voice boomed again. “Only purebred German shepherds have those. And what fine teeth . . .”
Rude fingers pulled back Etzel’s lips.
“With the right training, they could tear a man to shreds. Should we take him?”
Ja, take him,” rumbled a second voice. “And we will turn him into the fiercest guard dog on the Berlin police force.”
Etzel was shoved into a canvas bag.
His mother barked.
Greta and Otto yelped.
In the bag’s darkness, Etzel whined.
  • WINNER | 2020
    Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award
  • SELECTION | 2018
    Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best Books
"With the story’s most incredible plot developments based on fact, this fascinating and heartwarming piece of historical fiction will be met with wonder."—Booklist, starred review
© Scott Fleming
Candace Fleming is the prolific and versatile award-winning author of many books for children and young adults. Her most recent title, The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, received six starred reviews, was a Kirkus, PW, Booklist, and SLJ Best Book of the Year, and was hailed by the Wall Street Journal as a "fascinating chronicle." Candace's The Family Romanov also received six starred reviews and won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was recognized as a Sibert Nonfiction Honor Book. Amelia Lost received four starred reviews and won the Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction. Her many acclaimed picture books include Giant Squid, a Sibert Honor Book. Visit her on the web at candacefleming.com. View titles by Candace Fleming
© Random House Children's Books
“Children are the best audience: they are curious, enthusiastic, impulsive, generous, and pleased by simple joys. They laugh easily at the ridiculous and are willing to believe the absurd. Children are not ironic, disillusioned, or indifferent, but hopeful, open-minded, and open-hearted, with a voracious hunger for pictures and stories.”—Eric Rohmann

Eric Rohmann is an author and illustrator of books for young readers. His book Time Flies received a Caldecott Honor award and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric Rohmann lives in a suburb of Chicago. He holds degrees in fine arts from Arizona State University, and Illinois State University. In addition to writing and illustrating children’s books, he has taught drawing and printmaking. His artwork has been featured in various exhibitions and permanent collections throughout the country.


Books
I usually start with a picture, and then the words and story line follow. I was a visual artist first, so this seems natural.

I make books I want to see but haven’t been made yet.

I make books for myself—it’s the audience I understand most—and I’m blessed that children seem to like what I do.

I’m interested in what books do that other art forms don’t—that is, they involve the element of time. Time passes as the reader turns the pages, revealing events in a sequence—a story.
My paintings have always been narratives, and the natural next step was books.

Ideas
Ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. Because of this, everything I do has a chance of influencing my work. Experiences + reaction to those experiences = ideas.

My favorite part of the bookmaking process is the beginning: exploration, discovery, sketching, daydreaming.

I make many preliminary sketches. I need to get an idea down on paper so I can step away and literally see it. The novelist E. M. Forster wrote, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”

Painting
I try to look at each picture as a film director considers a scene for a film, from many angles and in many lights, hoping to find a composition that is interesting and dynamic but that, above all, works to make the story stronger.

The studio is at times a sanctuary—where you’d rather be than anywhere else—or it is the last place you want to be—a place filled with monsters.

Sometimes I like working; other times I’d rather be doing anything else. My kitchen is never cleaner than when I’m in the middle of a project.

I’m generally lazy, but that’s overcome by the desire to see what comes next. My gadfly is curiosity.

At first, I have only an inkling of what I want a book to look like, and I’ll put those ideas down in pencil sketches or a rough dummy. This is a point of departure. What I imagine—the visuals in my head—are never as rich as the real thing, so I make something, and then either leave it, change it, or wipe it away and start over again.

I work slowly and I try to work on all the paintings, alternating from one to another each day (usually in no sensible pattern!).

I don’t think I create paintings as much as recognize them when I bump into them.

I use oil paints, which dry slowly and allow me to explore slowly. Oils also smell like painting—there is a sensory connection to history.

I visit museums and galleries as much as I can and I try to look at everything with an interested and curious eye. I always find something I never expected to be as wonderful as it is.

I wipe away about as much paint as I apply. It has to be a trial-and-error process. As soon as you are completely sure of what you’re doing, you are probably doing work that looks like work you’ve done before.

Why Children’s Books
Children are the best audience: they are curious, enthusiastic, impulsive, generous, and pleased by simple joys. They laugh easily at the ridiculous and are willing to believe the absurd. Children are not ironic, disillusioned, or indifferent, but hopeful, open-minded, and open-hearted, with a voracious hunger for pictures and stories.

Growing Up
As a boy, I read Wanda Gag, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Maurice Sendak, J.R.R. Tolkien, George Herriman, and any comic book I could get my hands on. I made drawings of fanciful machines after Rube Goldberg. I drew monsters, knights, dinosaurs, and ships. In school I drew complex space battles on notebook paper when I should have been learning the difference between “infer” and “imply.”

I wasn’t a very good student. I remember my high school guidance counselor suggested I consider a trade: “Perhaps ship-fitting or something in a lumber yard?”

While in high school, a friend and I volunteered at the Brookfield Zoo. We worked in the children’s zoo, feeding the animals, cleaning the enclosures, and observing animals firsthand.

As a boy, I learned to sit back and sense the world around me. My nostalgic mind recalls grass-scented air, the rustle of cottonwood leaves in the wind, tadpoles wiggling in the creek, and shooting stars.

Private Life
I’m not always working on books and paintings. I also think about books and paintings, and look at books and paintings by other people.


PRAISE

THE PRAIRIE TRAIN
“The book’s handsome design, as well as Rohmann’s deft portraits of Conor and his fellow immigrants, adds to the book’s many deeply felt pleasures.”—Publishers Weekly


TIME FLIES

—A Caldecott Honor Book
—A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
—A New York Times Book Review Best Children’s Book
—An ALA Notable Book
—A Colorado Children’s Book Award Nominee.

“A work of informed imagination and masterly storytelling unobtrusively underpinned by good science . . . an entirely absorbing narrative made all the more rich by its wordlessness.”—The New York Times Book Review


THE CINDER-EYED CATS
“A beautiful book that readers will turn to again and again.”—Starred, Booklist

“Rohmann’s bright-eyed cats are as mesmerizing as a vivid dream.”—Publishers Weekly

“Rohmann’s magnificent oil paintings masterfully mix reality and fantasy.”—Los Angeles Times

View titles by Eric Rohmann

Classroom Activities for Strongheart: Wonder Dog of the Silver Screen

Classroom activities supplement discussion and traditional lessons with group projects and creative tasks. Can be used in pre-existing units and lessons, or as stand-alone.

(Please note: the guide displayed here is the most recently uploaded version; while unlikely, any page citation discrepancies between the guide and book is likely due to pagination differences between a book’s different formats.)

About

For fans of Balto and other real-life dog stories, here's a heavily illustrated middle-grade novel about a canine movie star of the 1920s, dramatically told in both words and pictures by an acclaimed author and a Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator.

When movie director Larry Trimble travels to Berlin searching for his next big star--a dog!--he finds Etzel, a fierce, highly trained three-year-old German shepherd police dog. Larry sees past the snarls and growls and brings Etzel back to Hollywood, where he is renamed Strongheart. Along with screenwriter Jane Murfin, Larry grooms his protégé to be a star of the silver screen--and he succeeds, starting with Strongheart's first film, The Love Master, which is released in 1921. Strongheart is soon joined by a leading lady, a German shepherd named Lady Julie, and becomes a sensation.

Touching, charming, playful, and based on real events, this moving tale by Candace Fleming and illustrated by Eric Rohmann tells all about "the wonder dog" who took America by storm.

A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF 2018
A CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF 2018

Excerpt

 
On a farm between the Bavarian Alps and the city of Berlin, a carefree puppy named Etzel played in a sun-washed barnyard.
He chased the chickens, barking in delight at their squawks and flaps.
He tipped over his water bowl, splashing and sliding in sloppy-fun mud.
And he gulped down the last of his kibble, licking the bowl to shiny emptiness. 
At last, tired and full, he flopped onto the squirming puppies nestled in the curve of his mother’s belly.
 
His sister, Greta, nipped his ear.
His brother, Otto, yipped a complaint.
But Etzel just wiggled down between them and sighed.
His family. 
 
He had just closed his eyes, when—
“Here’s a big, handsome one,” a man’s voice boomed.
Rough hands tore Etzel away from his family and held him high.
The puppy whimpered. His paws flailed in the suddenly cold air.
“Look at those markings,” the voice boomed again. “Only purebred German shepherds have those. And what fine teeth . . .”
Rude fingers pulled back Etzel’s lips.
“With the right training, they could tear a man to shreds. Should we take him?”
Ja, take him,” rumbled a second voice. “And we will turn him into the fiercest guard dog on the Berlin police force.”
Etzel was shoved into a canvas bag.
His mother barked.
Greta and Otto yelped.
In the bag’s darkness, Etzel whined.

Awards

  • WINNER | 2020
    Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award
  • SELECTION | 2018
    Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best Books

Reviews

"With the story’s most incredible plot developments based on fact, this fascinating and heartwarming piece of historical fiction will be met with wonder."—Booklist, starred review

Author

© Scott Fleming
Candace Fleming is the prolific and versatile award-winning author of many books for children and young adults. Her most recent title, The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh, received six starred reviews, was a Kirkus, PW, Booklist, and SLJ Best Book of the Year, and was hailed by the Wall Street Journal as a "fascinating chronicle." Candace's The Family Romanov also received six starred reviews and won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was recognized as a Sibert Nonfiction Honor Book. Amelia Lost received four starred reviews and won the Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction. Her many acclaimed picture books include Giant Squid, a Sibert Honor Book. Visit her on the web at candacefleming.com. View titles by Candace Fleming
© Random House Children's Books
“Children are the best audience: they are curious, enthusiastic, impulsive, generous, and pleased by simple joys. They laugh easily at the ridiculous and are willing to believe the absurd. Children are not ironic, disillusioned, or indifferent, but hopeful, open-minded, and open-hearted, with a voracious hunger for pictures and stories.”—Eric Rohmann

Eric Rohmann is an author and illustrator of books for young readers. His book Time Flies received a Caldecott Honor award and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric Rohmann lives in a suburb of Chicago. He holds degrees in fine arts from Arizona State University, and Illinois State University. In addition to writing and illustrating children’s books, he has taught drawing and printmaking. His artwork has been featured in various exhibitions and permanent collections throughout the country.


Books
I usually start with a picture, and then the words and story line follow. I was a visual artist first, so this seems natural.

I make books I want to see but haven’t been made yet.

I make books for myself—it’s the audience I understand most—and I’m blessed that children seem to like what I do.

I’m interested in what books do that other art forms don’t—that is, they involve the element of time. Time passes as the reader turns the pages, revealing events in a sequence—a story.
My paintings have always been narratives, and the natural next step was books.

Ideas
Ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. Because of this, everything I do has a chance of influencing my work. Experiences + reaction to those experiences = ideas.

My favorite part of the bookmaking process is the beginning: exploration, discovery, sketching, daydreaming.

I make many preliminary sketches. I need to get an idea down on paper so I can step away and literally see it. The novelist E. M. Forster wrote, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”

Painting
I try to look at each picture as a film director considers a scene for a film, from many angles and in many lights, hoping to find a composition that is interesting and dynamic but that, above all, works to make the story stronger.

The studio is at times a sanctuary—where you’d rather be than anywhere else—or it is the last place you want to be—a place filled with monsters.

Sometimes I like working; other times I’d rather be doing anything else. My kitchen is never cleaner than when I’m in the middle of a project.

I’m generally lazy, but that’s overcome by the desire to see what comes next. My gadfly is curiosity.

At first, I have only an inkling of what I want a book to look like, and I’ll put those ideas down in pencil sketches or a rough dummy. This is a point of departure. What I imagine—the visuals in my head—are never as rich as the real thing, so I make something, and then either leave it, change it, or wipe it away and start over again.

I work slowly and I try to work on all the paintings, alternating from one to another each day (usually in no sensible pattern!).

I don’t think I create paintings as much as recognize them when I bump into them.

I use oil paints, which dry slowly and allow me to explore slowly. Oils also smell like painting—there is a sensory connection to history.

I visit museums and galleries as much as I can and I try to look at everything with an interested and curious eye. I always find something I never expected to be as wonderful as it is.

I wipe away about as much paint as I apply. It has to be a trial-and-error process. As soon as you are completely sure of what you’re doing, you are probably doing work that looks like work you’ve done before.

Why Children’s Books
Children are the best audience: they are curious, enthusiastic, impulsive, generous, and pleased by simple joys. They laugh easily at the ridiculous and are willing to believe the absurd. Children are not ironic, disillusioned, or indifferent, but hopeful, open-minded, and open-hearted, with a voracious hunger for pictures and stories.

Growing Up
As a boy, I read Wanda Gag, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Maurice Sendak, J.R.R. Tolkien, George Herriman, and any comic book I could get my hands on. I made drawings of fanciful machines after Rube Goldberg. I drew monsters, knights, dinosaurs, and ships. In school I drew complex space battles on notebook paper when I should have been learning the difference between “infer” and “imply.”

I wasn’t a very good student. I remember my high school guidance counselor suggested I consider a trade: “Perhaps ship-fitting or something in a lumber yard?”

While in high school, a friend and I volunteered at the Brookfield Zoo. We worked in the children’s zoo, feeding the animals, cleaning the enclosures, and observing animals firsthand.

As a boy, I learned to sit back and sense the world around me. My nostalgic mind recalls grass-scented air, the rustle of cottonwood leaves in the wind, tadpoles wiggling in the creek, and shooting stars.

Private Life
I’m not always working on books and paintings. I also think about books and paintings, and look at books and paintings by other people.


PRAISE

THE PRAIRIE TRAIN
“The book’s handsome design, as well as Rohmann’s deft portraits of Conor and his fellow immigrants, adds to the book’s many deeply felt pleasures.”—Publishers Weekly


TIME FLIES

—A Caldecott Honor Book
—A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
—A New York Times Book Review Best Children’s Book
—An ALA Notable Book
—A Colorado Children’s Book Award Nominee.

“A work of informed imagination and masterly storytelling unobtrusively underpinned by good science . . . an entirely absorbing narrative made all the more rich by its wordlessness.”—The New York Times Book Review


THE CINDER-EYED CATS
“A beautiful book that readers will turn to again and again.”—Starred, Booklist

“Rohmann’s bright-eyed cats are as mesmerizing as a vivid dream.”—Publishers Weekly

“Rohmann’s magnificent oil paintings masterfully mix reality and fantasy.”—Los Angeles Times

View titles by Eric Rohmann

Guides

Classroom Activities for Strongheart: Wonder Dog of the Silver Screen

Classroom activities supplement discussion and traditional lessons with group projects and creative tasks. Can be used in pre-existing units and lessons, or as stand-alone.

(Please note: the guide displayed here is the most recently uploaded version; while unlikely, any page citation discrepancies between the guide and book is likely due to pagination differences between a book’s different formats.)