A Kamloops man has written a children’s book about his late cat and hopes to have it on shelves by December.
Dennis Staginnus is a teacher-librarian at Kamloops School of the Arts and McGowan Park Elementary. He works full-time, and then writes and illustrates in the mornings and evenings.
Staginnus is no first-time writer. You can find his name on The Eye of Odin and The Emerald Dagger, which are young adult fantasy and science fiction novels.
Most recently, he has been working on writing and illustrating his new children’s book called Oh no! Where did Dopey go?
It’s a tale about a scraggly cat that gets lost on the ski hills of Sun Peaks. Staginnus says the book is about his cat Dopey, who passed away two years ago. Dopey was with him and his wife for 16 years before passing.
“My wife was volunteering at the BC SPCA and brought him home. No one wanted him because he was a black cat, I guess people are still a little superstitious about them,” Staginnus explained.
“What sets it apart from other picture books is that I also have some real-life photographs in it that I took of Dopey at Sun Peaks, so it’s a seek and find book, too. The children have to find Dopey in the photographs, so kids can find him as well as they go through the story.
“Kids gravitate to photographs of animals, I’ve noticed as a librarian. I’m hoping kids will be really entertained by this story, but they also keep rereading it and discovering new things they didn’t notice the first time around.”
He says the book is a tribute to Dopey, whose personality traits are depicted in the story.
Staginnus hopes to continue writing novels about him and his wife’s beloved cats, with the next one already in the works. It will be about his cat named Thistle and includes photos of her in Scotland.
To learn more about his novels, click here.
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