On winter nights last year, Sydney Kramer would tell her father,
Marc, about a dog named Calvin, better known as Cookie
Dalmatian.
As Sydney spun the tale of Cookie, a canine gumshoe who solves
the mystery of the stolen prom dresses and becomes the hero of his
high school, her father dutifully typed it on his laptop.
About the same time, Linda Stauffer, an illustrator and art
teacher, began drawing the characters, all dogs.
There was Cookie, of course, and a policeman named Harold Husky.
There was Charlie Chihuahua, who runs Cookie's favorite candy store,
stocked with candy bones. And old Dr. Beagle, the almost-retired
vet.
So it was that an imaginative 11-year old girl from Downingtown
and Stauffer, a grieving mother who had lost her daughter in a car
accident, came together. The result was The Case of the Stolen
Prom Dresses: A Cookie Dalmatian Mystery.
"I never met Sydney. I talked to her on the phone," said
Stauffer, who lives in Quakertown. After reading Sydney's story,
Stauffer offered to illustrate it. She visualized the canine cop,
the candy store owner, and others, like Cookie's best friend, Syd
Keeshond.
"She seems like a special little girl," Stauffer said. The
black-and-white drawings of the dogs meant that the story, which the
Kramer family paid to publish, could also became a coloring
book.
The collaboration came about through Sydney's father, who has his
own marketing firm. Stauffer sought his fund-raising expertise to
realize her dream of founding an art center in the Quakertown area
in memory of her daughter, Katie. During their conversations, she
heard about Sydney's book and offered to illustrate it.
Stauffer resigned as an art teacher in the Easton Area School
District after the death of her daughter in 2003. She has been
teaching art classes at the Upper Bucks Y in Quakertown, where her
daughter was a swim instructor. This week, classes at the Katie
Stauffer Memorial Arts and Cultural Center at the Y get under way.
Eventually, Linda Stauffer hopes to have a building just for the
arts center.
When Sydney heard that Katie Stauffer, a sophomore at Swarthmore
College, had been killed in a car accident in March 2003, she
dedicated the book to Katie and to her own mother, Jackie.
The book is sold over the Internet and at a local pet supply
store.
A fifth grader at Uwchlan Hills Elementary School in the
Downingtown Area School District, Sydney dreams of a Cookie
Dalmatian series and a television show. Her idols are the Olsen
twins.
"I want to have my own business and make my own money like
Mary-Kate and Ashley," she said.
On a recent day, dressed in a pink-and-white sweater and dangling
sparkle earrings, she said she chose a story about a dalmatian
because her father's friend had one and "they look like chocolate
chip cookies."
Because of central auditory problems, Sydney has a learning
disability, said her parents, both of whom graduated from
Coatesville Area High School.
"Sydney is shy and doesn't like to talk about her book," said Pam
Booraem, Sydney's teacher at Uwchlan Hills. "She wrote a mystery
once about a group of girls who go to New York City on a class trip
and find out that a jewel was slipped into a classmate's handbag. It
was very cool. She has this really neat sense of humor and is very
creative."
For now, Sydney, who longs for a dog of her own but has to settle
for a guinea pig, is busy writing in her journal and jotting down
ideas for new stories.
She is thinking of a sequel to The Case of the Stolen Prom
Dresses. In that story, the criminal Cookie apprehends for
stealing the prom dresses - Alan S. the most dangerous Saint Bernard
in town - will try to exact revenge on Cookie.
People
To order a copy of "The Case of the Stolen Prom Dresses,"
go to http://www.cookiedalmatian.com/
on the Internet.
The book is also available at Frazer Zoo, a pet store at 235
Lancaster Ave. (Route 30) in Frazer, but last week it was down to
its last copy. The phone is 610-644-4492.
