Just a Dog by Gerard Michael Bauer

stories to tell. It was good coming out here every day with my journal and sitting under the mango tree and writing all Moe’s stories. Even the hard ones. And every time I saw Moe’s bowl with his name on it, it kind of felt like he was still waiting for me, same as always. Dumb, I know.
    I still miss him heaps. Sometimes I think I hear his whine or his weird howling bark but it’s always some other dog somewhere. And sometimes I think I’m going to see him on the porch or running around the backyard or waiting out the front. But I never do. There’s just this big empty space where he used to be.
    Amelia wants to get a new dog. She’s always bugging Mum and Dad about it. I think it would be weird having a dog that wasn’t Mister Mosely. Amelia wants a little fluffy one that could fit inside a handbag but Mum keeps saying that a dog is a ‘big commitment’ and we’ll just have to ‘wait andsee’ what happens with Dad’s work.
    Dad could be getting his old job back selling TVs and stuff now that the recession thing might be going away. I really hope he does. Maybe that would make him happy and he’d tell jokes and funny stories all the time like before and maybe him and Mum wouldn’t be so quiet together and they might even laugh again the way they did that time when Amelia drew all that stuff on Mister Mosely. That’s what I want more than anything in the entire world.
    But I wanted Mister Mosely to get better too. And he didn’t. So just because you really want something to happen doesn’t mean that it will. I guess it’s like Mum keeps telling Amelia. Sometimes you just have to ‘wait and see’.
    Mister Mosely was really good at doing that. He waited for heaps of stuff. He waited on the porch for us to come outside. He waited for ages to get better after the car hit him. He waited all those times for Uncle Gavin to stop teasing him and for Amelia to get tired of dressing him up and for Dad to finish his tea and for Grace to be born. And he waited for me too. Every single day after school.
    That’s what I’m going to do with Mum and Dad. Just wait. Wait and hope. Same as I did when I waited to find out if those little green shoots on Moe’s grave would turn into weeds or flowers.
    Maybe I learnt how to do that from Mister Mosely. Maybe it’s the one trick he taught me. That sometimes, no matter how much you want something, the very best thing you can do is wait, just like he did. Wait for stuff to happen or stop happening, for things to heal up and get better or for someone to come home.
    I reckon that’s a pretty good trick to learn, from just a dog.

Also by Michael Gerard Bauer
    The Running Man
    Don’t Call Me Ishmael!
    Ishmael and the Return of the Dugongs
    Dinosaur Knights
    You Turkeys!
Illustrated by Nahum Ziersch
    Â 
    Teachers’ notes for Michael Gerard Bauer’s books are available from
www.scholastic.com.au

Dinosaur Knights
    Michael Gerard Bauer
    The opening in the forest before them was an eerie jumble of shapes and shadows … Roland and Oswald strained their eyes … finding imaginary monsters in the bulky bushes and arching tree limbs
.
    Then they saw a real one
.
    Somewhere in the future a scientist is conducting the experiment of his life – stretching time to bring a living dinosaur to the present. But the technology fails, and the giant prehistoric beast is stranded in the Middle Ages. There, a boy desperate to be a knight and his unwilling brother must face their fear and do battle.
    â€¦ an original and adrenalin-pumping adventure yarn that grips the reader from the first page and doesn’t let go
.
    Barry Jonsberg

The Running Man
    Michael Gerard Bauer
    There had always been the Running Man – always that phantom form somewhere in the distance, always shuffling relentlessly closer …
    Tom Leyton, a reclusive Vietnam veteran, has been the subject of rumour and gossip