Adding to her already long list of achievements, Junior Sophie Ginsburg teamed up with her family to write and publish the first edition of a new series about her dog and the crazy adventures they have had throughout his life. The News Crew sat down with Sophie to ask her about her book and tips to aspiring young authors.

Michael McNeill: In a brief summary, what is your book about?

Sophie Ginsburg: The book is called Dear Mr. Albert, It’s Me Prince and it’s about the stories of how my dog got to be in our family. He was originally a service dog and then he got Addison’s disease. Then, he was in a bunch of different foster homes, he was dying and needed to find a good healthy family and my parents somehow got in touch with the lady and now he’s our dog.

M: How did you come up with the idea to start a book?

S: That’s a good question, actually. So, basically, when we first got Prince – that’s the name of the dog – we would always walk him around the circle, me and my mom, and would always come back with all of these different stories that we would write down in this one journal to tell my parents, telling my grandparents and all our family members. When the book started to fill up, we were like, ‘We should actually publish this and write a book.’ Then one day my mom started typing it up over vacation, and long story short, we’re on the phone with the publisher and it’s published!

M: That’s awesome. I looked at the Amazon [synopsis] and it said that all or some of the profits are going [towards what?]

S: Dogs for Disabled Veterans. The profits for the book, because Prince was part of a program called Dogs for Disabled Veterans, he was a service dog for disabled veterans and therefore some of the proceeds from the money we make will go to that organization.

M: Did you ever think that you would be writing a book one day?

S: No, I didn’t! Medical has always been my career path that I wanted to go on, but definitely writing a book is something that is going to help me [with] getting into college, and it’s been a really great experience talking with publishers and doing press releases, and going to do interviews. I’ve gone to three or four elementary schools, and I have a couple more planned, and presenting to students and connecting with students about how they can be benefits to disabled veterans, and how they can write a book when you’re young.

M: Do you have plans to do more editions of the book?

S: Yes! We actually just started. Our goal was to get on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and then we said we would start writing a second book, and I think as of last week we got into Barnes & Noble, so they’re starting to sell at Barnes & Noble. We will begin writing down the memories for the second book.

M: I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I was informed that your book is going to be on the summer reading list for all the sixth-graders?

S: It is! I actually dropped off the book to the sixth-grade teachers but I didn’t know that it was going to be an official summer reading, but that’s kind of cool! I didn’t know that, but it is. It’s also going to be in the library schools in all the elementary schools in the Palm Beach County School District.

M: What would you say to someone who wants to go down the same path as you?

S: I would say – this is going to sound really cheesy – but you’ve got to keep going, because for us, it took us maybe four years combined to create the actual finished product of the book. There was a lot of bumps in the road: the publisher wasn’t working with us, and a lot of editing. We had to have, like, twenty rounds of editing with a bunch of different editors, and form a relationship with our illustrator. There were a lot of difficult things in the way, but it was definitely worth it in the end.

If you are interested in purchasing her book or learning more about Prince, you can visit the website www.princethedog.com or click the link here: