Guest Post: How My Life With a Guatemelan Street Dog Became a Children’s Book

By Jill Brazier

Use your senses and pay attention to what’s around you. You never know where inspiration might strike! These are two of the lessons that I focus on when presenting my bilingual children’s book, Doley the Guatemalan Street Dog: The Sounds of San Marcos, to students. I never would have imagined that my time living in a treehouse above Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, and my special friendship with a starving little street dog, would direct the course of my life for years to come.

At 20 years old, I traveled by land from Seattle to Guatemala. The trip took over a year, with stops along the way to find work when the money ran out. Guatemala was never on my list, but I loved my time in Mexico and wanted to continue south. I joined up with a traveling companion for a long, bumpy, chicken-bus ride from…