ANA LUCIA ALBA MARÍA ALEJANDRA HERNÁNDEZ MARIANA ZULUAGA
(we are gonna suppose this is a real book, so as real books; this page goes blank)
This book is dedicated to Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray and all the ones who have been affected by unfair incarceration. May the force and justice be by your side someday
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PROLOGUE This story shows us the adversities men, women and even children have had to face throughout history due to racism, through the eyes of five puppies. Honore de Balzac once said “Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.� The experiences the characters of this story go through act as a mirror of the disadvantages that regarding law injustice have accompanied African Americans throughout history, and it shows how powerful people take advantage of the weaknesses of the most vulnerable ones. This story is inspired by the central park five and tells one of the stories the world has not heard enough. 2
It was a bright wednesday night. All the puppies from the near neighborhoods from Canine York went to the Big park to play and hangout as usual with their friends, and also with the ones who were not their friends. But there was a thing they all had in common; Unfortunately, they were called the ¨dirty puppies¨. Not because they were actually Dirty, but it was owing to the fact they were not purebred and because of their dark color. But they didn't care a lot, because they were happy and that was what really mattered. Well, it mattered only until something happened that night, something none of those puppies imagined, specially five of them: Korey, Kevin, Ray, Yusef and Antron.
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None of them wondered that from tens of puppies who were playing outside that night, they would be blamed for something they didn't do, and how that could affect their lives. It was all a coincidence. That night they were barking a lot and smelling the butholes of strangers only as a joke. They were doing a lot of noise, but nothing else that could be considered dangerous. But in the middle of the fun, suddenly, they listened a hard squeal coming from the near trees. They were not aware until the police came and started to chase them. That squeal came from a Young Female dog who was later found unconscious with bites around her neck. The name in her collar was Trisha. The police first will was to find the dog who did the attack, but what they did was to capture the first puppies they saw with the excuse that they could be suspicious because they were not purebred.
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A few days later, the dog in charge of the investigation, Linda, and her police squadron started to interrogate five of the tens of puppies who where present in the park that night; Korey, Kevin, Ray, Antron and Yusef. None of them knew each other before. All of them were forced to stay in the police station without their parents being present, which was considered illegal because they were puppies who needed the company of an adult during the interrogation Because of being mixed breed it was easier to blame them of a crime without any evidences in comparison to a purebred dog. At first, they were scared because they knew they did nothing, but also they felt that justice was not going to favor them because they knew they were different. They tried to be cautious during the interrogation, but if they nodded they were tortured. They were also forced to stay there for hours without eating or sleeping and were beaten until they lied and told what the police and Linda wanted to hear.
After hours of interrogation, the police dogs under the orders of Linda, manipulated the puppies and made them believe that if they blamed the other puppies they would be able to go home with their families. All ended up lying and told the authorities that the other puppies were involved, with the hope that by doing this they could avoid the embarrassment and pressure that the situation could cause on them and their families. Finally the police ended up creating a story that fit the crime so they could frame them and declare them guilty of a crime they didn’t commit or witness, without even knowing each other. They took advantage of their innocence and the social disadvantage that they had in the community.
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A couple of hours later, Antron, Raymond and Yusef were sent to court. That was the place where a judge would come to a conclusion that could possibly ruin their lives. Kevin was lucky enough to trade the cookies he had for freedom until he had to go to court, but later on, Korey and him had to go to the supreme dog court all by themselves. A group of purebred dogs agreed on helping them discuss with the judge for free, since they had no one else to help them —-These
five puppies did something wrong and we are going to prove it!
—-Linda
said —-We
know they did nothing wrong! We want them free!
—-
A group of dirty dogs
answered While this was going on, the parents of the puppies were very afraid of what might happen to them. Finally, even though the police was never able to prove they had bitten Trisha, the judge still decided they were all guilty. Linda was able
The judge's decision had already been made, all of the puppies were now going to be sent to a dark dog pound for puppies, where each of them was going to spend 10 years of their lives, except for Korey. Korey was given 15 years of dog pound jail. All of them suffered, they were treated poorly and lived almost miserably, but Korey who was surrounded by adults, was hit and bitten by other dogs and you could even hear his whines and his yelling from miles away, and even though he asked to move to another dog pound, he was treated even worse. When the police dogs at the dogpound saw he was in danger, they got him a room to stay at by himself, but a few months later, he was sent to a safer dog pound in which he even had a roommate named Matias. That was the last dog pound he would be staying at.
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Their time in the dog pounds had been completed, all of the puppies who had grown up to be dogs were finally set free, and they saw their families for the first time since they were puppies. -Look how much you've grown! I missed you my baby! said all of the moms to their sons who still believed they were innocent —It’s
okay mom, i'm here, and I'm ready to start my life again.
But it wasn't that easy. Sadly, no one wanted to be around the dogs who had bitten the popular Trisha. No one wanted to work with a dog that had been in a dog pound for 10 years. The dog pound had definitely paralyzed their work and love life, until one day something else shook their lives again. While Antron, Kevin, Raymond and Yusef were in their houses again, Korey was still in the dog pound, he still had some time left there. One day he was in a small park inside the pound, hanging out with some other dogs, when his roommate (or cellmate) named Matias approached him.
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—-Hey!
Are you Korey? I've seen you on the news—Matias said. —-Yeah, that's me, all of my friends are at their houses now, and I'm still here when I shouldn't be —- said korey in a sad tone. Their conversation was short, Korey barely knew this dog, they had never really spoken, even though they slept in the same room. A few days later Korey was told that he was going home, that someone had confessed he had bitten Trisha and that he would be set free. That someone, was Matías. The news were all over Canine York, they reunited to celebrate that their innocence was finally proved. Meanwhile, Linda's reputation got even worse, but even then, she never stopped saying they were guilty The judge and all of the dogs responsible of sending them to the dog pounds had to give them a lot of treats for the rest of their lives, and after all the suffering they went through, justice was finally by their side. And the five dogs lived happily ever after as they should always had.
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d n E e Th For the final feedback, our conclusion is that we really loved the project and we think, as a group, that we did an amazing job. This book could be easily sold to kids and we think the final product was excellent. The initial task was kind of hard at the beginning because the topic that we chose had some really explicit and violent content that contained complicated words, but it was also really fun to look for a creative way to adapt this story to something more practical. We loved the idea of the puppies and we think everyone in the group collaborated with nice ideas and hard working on this project.
FEEDBACK ● Girls, I completely agree with your feedback and I think this book was an incredible adaptation of very unfair and violent event. Also, I can’t compliment the illustrations enough, they are wonderful as well as your characters. My only question would be: why didn’t you use 10 new words as instructed? I counted them over and over and you used only 7 , which implies not complying to the instruction. This made me quite sad because the evaluation parameters lead to a grade that is inferior to the book’s quality, but I must stick to the parameters that were established and explained, otherwise I’d be unfair to the other girls. 7-2 mistx0.1= 6.8/10