The Starlight Barking (101 Dalmatians)

Product Information

Xenofiction: Although for the most part a fantasy story, there are shades of this, as it's made clear that dogs think very differently from humans. Missis may not know right from left, but the fact that Pongo does know right from left is treated as rather remarkable and proof of his advanced intelligence.

Author Tract: 101 Dalmatians is not Dodie Smith's only work with a strong pro-animal, anti-fur message, only the one that features both subjects as major themes. Most of her other works usually manage a sly jab about the author's opinion on furs, but tend to handle the anti-fur message more subtly, usually by pointing out how ridiculous people look in fur (famously in I Capture the Castle, Rose — who acquires her coat by pure happenstance and who doesn't even like furs — ends up in a humiliating predicament after being mistaken for a bear) or by making the antagonist a fur-wearer. Many of her other works also feature at least one notable canine companion.A Cat in a Gang of Dogs: Lt. Tib and to a lesser degree Cruella's cat are the only felines in the story. Both assist the dalmatians. In both the live-action and animated adaptations, there is only one nanny, Missis and Perdita were combined into one character, and other characters, such as many of the other dogs, Prince, Tommy, Cruella's cat, and Cruella's husband, were omitted. In the animated film, Pongo and Missis' owners' last names were changed to "Radcliffe" from "Dearly", and in the live-action film, Cruella (portrayed by Glenn Close) appears as the spoiled magnate of an haute couture fashion house, " House of DeVil". Disney kept the book's characters Horace and Jasper Baddun in both versions, but represented them as the thieves hired by Cruella to steal Pongo and Missis' puppies. In the novel, Horace is named Saul, and they are merely caretakers, the puppies having been stolen by hired professional thieves some days before. Mr. de Vil “didn’t seem to be anything but a furrier,” Smith writes cattily, and Cruella married him for access to furs. Furs are essential to her lifestyle because she is always cold, and Smith strongly implies that nothing short of hellfire will ever be quite hot enough for her. ( The Hundred and One Dalmatians is a very Anglican book, and I will warn you now that, similar to many other English children’s books of its era, the novel’s anti-Semitism is only barely coded.) Right from the outset the reader is presented with a mystery as to why all humans, birds, insects, horses, mice, pigs, cows, cats … etc have fallen into a deep sleep. But not, of course, dogs, and oddly one child and one cat.

It's well known that Dodie Smith is a wonderful children's author and this book just adds to her repatoir. I loved the way she created her characters and gave them all different personalities and quirks to go along with them as well and I thought it was one of the most heartwarming novels with a great amount of adventure that I've read in a long and I think this is one along with the preceding book that should be in every child's library.Spell My Name with a "The": Cadpig is almost always called "the Cadpig" as a nod to her name (a cadpig is the smallest piglet of the litter). I thought the characters were simply delightful. While the book is written at a bit of a hire level for young children nowadays, we simply forget that children's books used to be written a lot different compared to those we see more often. As I said the characters were delightful and it was lovely to see much of the original cast and to meet some new faces as well which included the dog version of the British parliament. Genre Shift: The Starlight Barking, the sequel to the original book, is a fairly bizarre departure from the mundane (except for the sentient animals) setting of the first book featuring Sirius, Lord of the Dog Star, a Sufficiently Advanced Alien who, concerned about the possibility of nuclear war destroying dogkind, causes all humans and other animals to fall into an unnaturally deep sleep. This is likely a significant part of the reason why the sequel never saw a film adaptation and has subsequently been almost forgotten. The Starlight Barking is not really about Cruella, who appears in only a single scene for a glorified cameo. ( What the book is actually about is bonkers, by the way, and I don’t think I could spoil it if I tried.) Still, she makes every moment of it count. The premise of the plot of this book is decidedly bizarre; as if Mrs Smith was on an acid high at the time (1967). However, in the light of the wonderful “One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” I prefer to think (delude myself?) that fault lies with the erring and unnamed editor at William Heinemann whose imagination was no doubt entirely caught up in the Space Race, science fiction, and should instead have taken out and shot at dawn as a lesson to prevent Penguin from later adding the title to their Puffin range.

One day, while walking Pongo and Missis, Mr. and Mrs. Dearly have a chance meeting with an old schoolmate of Mrs. Dearly: Cruella de Vil, a wealthy woman so fixated on fur clothing that she married a furrier and forces him to keep his collection in their home so she can wear the pieces whenever she likes. She admires the two dogs and expresses a desire to have a Dalmatian-skin coat. Later, Missis gives birth to a litter of 15 puppies. Concerned that Missis will not be able to feed them all, the humans join in to help. As Mrs. Dearly looks for a canine wet nurse, she finds an exhausted liver-spotted Dalmatian in the middle of the road in the rain. She has the dog, who has recently given birth, treated by a vet and names her Perdita (meaning "lost"). Perdita helps to nurse the pups and becomes a member of the family. She tells Pongo about her lost love Prince and the resulting litter of puppies, which were sold by her neglectful owner. She had run away looking for those puppies.Dalmatians Pongo and Missis live with the newly married Mr. and Mrs. Dearly and their two nannies, Nanny Cook and Nanny Butler. Mr. Dearly is a "financial wizard" who has been granted lifelong tax exemption and lent a house on the Outer Circle in Regent's Park in return for wiping out the government debt. The dogs consider the humans their pets but allow them to think that they are the owners. Missis Pongo - known as "Missis" to most. She is more intuitive but less practical than her husband, but just as famous and admired. She grasps the concepts of "magic" and "metaphysical" far better than her husband when the strange happenings occur. The Prime Minister - Cadpig's beloved owner. She idolized him when he was on TV, and he in turn was so touched by her affection (something he hadn't had for a long time) when they met that he broke down in tears and adopted her. Cruella’s clothes now clank because, having abandoned fur after losing to the Dalmatians in the previous book, Cruella has since embraced tin. With characteristic commitment, she now sleeps on tin sheets. She is manufacturing and selling tin raincoats, which come “in bright colors, scarlet, emerald, sapphire, flame” and have sharp cutting edges. Perhaps relevant to Cruella’s interests after the Dalmatians ripped all her old furs into pieces, they are also unbreakable.