Kuumba Luumba

"I'm from a shelter but don't cry for me," will not be the only words you'll remember from this first ever "dogography" by Brooklyn dog, Kuumba Blue Handy

You'll want to read more of how he found friends in the volunteers at the shelter, who prepared him for the life he'd get to live with the Brooklyn family that adopted him.

You will joyfully follow Kuumba Luumba's adventures in the streets of Brooklyn to the green fields of Prospect Park. You will watch while he dances in the street at the Caribbean American parade and dresses as a ghost for Halloween. And you will marvel, page after page, at his many encounters in a world where dogs rule and Kuumba excels.

Fundamentally, all readers will learn from him the meaning of good life: L-O-V-E. And it's not where you start from, in Kuumba's case in an animal shelter, that makes the life you will live. It's the love that you give and receive in return that will.

It's a beautiful dog's life, all told, Kuumba would add, in rhythm and rhyme.

-- Written by Edna Wells Handy Illustrated by Mai S. Kemble