First-time author promotes dog adoption

Book-signing Aug. 19 in Damariscotta
Thu, 08/17/2017 - 8:15am

If Linda Porter could, she would open an animal sanctuary. She hopes to, someday. In the meantime, she is using her new children’s book to spread the word in Wiscasset, Damariscotta and elsewhere in and outside Maine to adopt a shelter dog or other rescue.

Porter, 60, a program manager at Mobius in Damariscotta, plans to donate a portion of sales from “Angus Tapangus from Kangamangus, a Good, GOOD Boy” to Lincoln County Animal Shelter in Edgecomb. She has a reading and book-signing at Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop in Damariscotta at 1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 19. And earlier this month, the Peabody, Massachusetts-raised, Bristol resident read the book to youngsters at Sheepscot Valley Children’s House in Wiscasset.

“It was great,” Sheepscot Valley Children’s House Director Audrey Latella said. She added in an email, “Having authors come in and share with our students encourages them to learn skills to help them become readers.”

Porter has donated a copy to Skidompha Library in Damariscotta and plans to also give one to Wiscasset Public Library. Family ties are helping get the book outside Maine, as well, including a recent donation to one library in Massachusetts, Porter said.

The book took her seven years. A workshop at Great Salt Bay School last April helped push her to get it published. She said she was told children’s books do really well in Maine. “I drove home really excited, and it was like, ‘I’m going to finish it,’” Porter recalled.

Her family inspired the family in “Angus,” and the story’s title character is partly based on a Puerto Rican rescue her family adopted and named Angus. The “Tapangus from Kangamangus” part of the book’s title is an affectionate, longer name she had for Angus. “It’s a story close to my heart ... it’s really about every dog I’ve ever known and loved, and (about) that search for family and home.”

If interested in ordering a copy, contact Porter at bassai213@yahoo.com