Madison’s New Buddy
| Author | Crystal Velasquez |
| Illustrator | Yaffa Jaskoll |
| Originally Published | © 2018 American Girl |
| ISBN | 9781338114935 |
Table of Contents
- Opening Day Jitters
- School Surprise
- A Stressful Secret
- Friendship Advice
- A Lucky Day
- Madison’s Plan
- Sleepover Singalong
- Cats Out of the Bag
- Being Brave
- An Unlikely Hero
Opening Day Jitters
Madison Rosen twirls in front of the mirror in her room, her red hair fanning out around her. She’s wearing a bright yellow skirt, and a t-shirt with a labrador puppy on it. Her ensemble is completed with the kitten charm necklace her friends, Jasmine Arroyo, Keiko Hayashi, and Sofia Davis got her.
Madison is all dressed up for the reopening day of Rosa’s Refuge Animal Shelter. She and her friends helped the shelter raise money a few months ago so they could expand the shelter. When Madison’s mother calls her, she hurries down the stairs to see her kittens, Leo and Pepper, mewing for their lunch. The kittens are always hungry, and have been since Madison and her mom brought them home from the shelter a few months ago. Soon, they’ll be full-grown cats. Having them around, along with her new friends, made it easier for Madison to move into a new town and a new house.
When Madison and her mother finally reach the animal shelter, they find a big crowd gathered. Madison spots her new school principal, Mr. Brady, and her friends in the crowd. Madison goes over to greet her friends. Just then, Mrs. Wallace, the director of the animal shelter, appears below an arch of colorful balloons. She greets the crowd to cheers and applause, before she snips a red ribbon stretched in front of the shelter’s wide double-doors.
Everybody cheers and claps for the shelter. Then, they follow Mrs. Wallace inside to celebrate with cookies and lemonade. The new shelter is more beautiful than Madison even imagined. The walls are a soft baby blue with a play area in the back, and rows of new cages in front, most of them filled with dogs.
The girls run to the nearest cages. A scruffy terrier paws at the thin metal bars, and a border collie and beagle are yipping and whining in their cages. At the end of the row, a golden retriever puppy sits in the middle of his cage, with his eyes droopy and sad.
Mr. Brady comes up to join the girls, and sticks his finger between the bars of the golden retriever’s cage. The dog creeps away from him and shivers in fear. Madison points out to Jasmine that the puppy looks scared. Mrs. Wallace comes over, and tells the girls that the puppy, Buddy, was rescued from a home where he was being neglected. He’s nervous around people. A lot of new rescues are skittish and need time to become used to being handled by humans before they can be adopted.
Madison asks if there’s anything they can do for Buddy. Mrs. Wallace thinks for a moment, and then responds that dogs are social creatures, so being around volunteers like the girls will help. Jasmine and Madison agree they’ll all work together to help Buddy. Maybe they can read to the dogs to make them relax! Jasmine says their teachers always like it when students practice their reading.
Keiko and Sofia agree that’d be lots of fun. But Madison’s heart sinks. Reading is her least favorite thing to do at school. She has trouble reading. While it seems easy for everyone else, Madison has been seeing a reading specialist at school ever since she transferred. It still takes her a long time to read a single page. Now Buddy isn’t the only one feeling uncomfortable.