I was so happy to receive this note from Dr. Debra Hoffman, my veterinarian. She wrote: Dear Sylvia, I just finished reading Mitzvah the Mutt. What an adorable book!!! I loved it! I had a mutt named Mitzvah – a black cockapoo – and I can hear her thinking just…
Read MoreSammy Spider Fan Club Starts
Please join Noah, age 7, and become a member of the Sammy Spider Fan Club by simply sending us your letters and your pictures. I will answer each letter and try and post as many of your pictures as possible. Kar-Ben, the publisher of the Sammy Spider books, offers free…
Read MoreReview of Mitzvah the Mutt
I just read my first review of Mitzvah the Mutt, and it was wonderful!! In the Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter for May/June 2010, Andrea Davidson, Temple Tifereth Israel, Beachwood, Ohio wrote: Readers will laugh at Mitzvah’s zany misadventures,…Rouss uses Mitzvah’s humorous interpretations of the celebrations and his reactions to…
Read MoreSammy Spider
When I was growing up I had several younger siblings and cousins. Rather than read stories to them, I often made up stories but I never actually wrote anything down. As an adult, I became a teacher and continued to tell my stories to the children in my classroom. I…
Read MoreOnce upon a time there was a little rescue dog
Gretchen was a little dog we rescued at a local street fair. We were told that she was a Jack Russell-Dachshund mix, which made sense, but we would never know for sure – the only thing we were sure of was that she was a mutt. She was the silliest…
Read MoreHow Current Events Have Influenced My Writing
When I read the news this morning on the oil spill in the Gulf, I was reminded how current events have influenced my writing. In 2003, I was in Israel just before the launch of the space shuttle Columbia, and the Israeli press was full of articles on Ilan Ramon,…
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