Emily and her dog, Zack, have a special bond. But it's more than that―they can read each other's minds. Even more surprising, Zack knows when people are in trouble. Now, Emily and Zack are able to use their powers to save lives, though Emily is endangering hers in the process and making her parents worry. When a hurricane warning is issued, everyone in town starts preparing for the worst, but hoping for the best. What are the odds of a hurricane actually hitting a small town in Maine? Emily and Zack can't see into the future, so they don't know what's going to happen, but if the hurricane does come and the worst does happen, are a girl and her dog enough to save a town from the destructive power of Mother Nature? NICHOLAS EDWARDS is the author of the phenomenally successful Santa Paws series of books and is also Ellen Emerson White . Consisting of six novels and one picture book (beginning with Santa Paws in 1991 and continuing through to Santa Paws and the New Puppy in 2004), the Santa Paws series sold close to a million copies in the school and library market. He lives in New York City. Dog Whisperer: Storm Warning By Nicholas Edwards Square Fish Copyright © 2011 Nicholas Edwards All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312370954 1   Zachary wouldn’t pose properly—and, in Emily’s opinion, the fact that he was a dog was not a good enough excuse. She had been trying to draw a portrait of him ever since she’d gotten home from school, but all she had managed to do so far was a few wasted pages with the beginnings of pictures, none of which looked right at all . So she just kept flipping to the next page in her sketchbook and trying again—and again, and again . It was September, and the sky was that perfect bright blue shade, with almost no clouds, and a clean backdrop of tall green fir trees across the sound. The ocean was an even darker, clear blue, with the water just choppy enough to look interesting. So her plan had been for Zachary to sit sweetly on their dock, while she did her best to capture him looking dignified and noble. Zachary’s plan seemed to be to sit still for about thirty seconds, and then race along the rocky shoreline to bark at seagulls, crawl under bushes to find one of his many battered tennis balls, roll around in the grass, and gallop up to the back deck every so often to drink heartily from his water dish. Then, he would run over to her, wagging his tail. He kept trying to climb on her lap, even though—since he was a really big dog, over a hundred pounds—he weighed more than she did. Once, he even grabbed her pencil out of her hand and cocked his head, to indicate that he wanted her to throw it for him. “Zack,” she said patiently, and turned to yet another clean page on her pad. “I only want to draw you for, like, five minutes. I just need to get a really good outline down, and then we can play and I’ll finish it later.” Zachary’s ears perked up when he heard the word “play,” and he barked once. Okay. Maybe she should give up and spend the rest of the afternoon throwing things for him to fetch, and they could go for a nice, long walk down their dirt road. But, seriously, all she wanted to do was sketch the bare outlines, and maybe capture his expression. Zack always had a good expression. He looked really smart . He was a white retriever mix, which meant that she had to do a lot of shading on the paper to make him stand out from the background—which was why she had to practice a lot. “Could we try one more time?” she asked him Zachary tilted his head curiously, and she slipped her hand under his collar—a very flattering red plaid pattern—and led him down to the dock again. “If you could just sit for a couple of minutes, I promise I’ll draw really, really fast,” she said. He wagged his tail and sat down on the weathered wood. “That’s great!” she said, and hurried back to her sketch pad and started sketching as quickly as she could. She would worry about the colors later, but what she really wanted to do was re-create the alert, kind light in his brown eyes. Her parents had started signing her up for art classes when she was about five years old, so she had learned a lot—but she kind of knew just enough to realize how much she didn’t know. And the art teacher at her new junior high school in Brunswick was a real artist, who had recently moved up to Maine from Provincetown, and Emily was hoping that he would be able to help her learn lots of advanced drawing techniques. Mr. Reed had even said that he might start an after-school oil painting class soon, if enough students were interested! Zachary was being very good and patient now, and she sketched and shaded swiftly. He was sort of slouching, though, and she wished that he would sit up straighter, and maybe even lift a paw for her, like Lassie always did in the television reruns she had seen. “Could you please hold your paw up?” she asked, and demonstrated with her left hand. “Like this?” Zack looked dist