Kodiak & The Un-Hunted Place

“Kodiak & The Un-Hunted Place is an impressively original, inherently entertaining, deftly crafted, charmingly illustrated, thoughtful and thought-provoking novel-in-verse that is especially and unreservedly recommended for family, ... school, and community library collections....” (Children’s Bookwatch, December 2021)

“Tender and eloquent. Readers will fall in love with Kodiak, the cross-eyed Alaskan Malamute who stands up for smaller creatures in his yard.... Thoughtfully designed and illustrated, a lovely addition to libraries... for readers, young and old, who love dog stories and poetry.” (Mary Lanni, librarian and online book reviewer, YouTube Channel, November 2021)

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Kodiak & The Un-Hunted Place is a read-aloud, story-driven epic poem or novel in verse* about a big, cross-eyed dog who overcomes visual impairment to defend his backyard from a coyote.

At stake is more than a big dog’s sense of territory. The lives of whole families of rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, etc., hang in the balance as... Kodiak’s backyard has been, until the opening of this story, an “Un-Hunted Place” —a rare bit of space where small animals live enchanted lives, free from fear.

Kodiak is its defender against a coyote, who is hungry and skilled in the art of tracking... devouring... rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and other creatures “always less than half his size.”

The conflict between Kodiak and the coyote leads inevitably to a battle of snapping jaws and deep-throated fury... and a climax of an ending to the story that first amazes… then lingers in the heart.

There’s more to this dog story, of course. Kodiak & The Un-Hunted Place is also about the art of storytelling itself… with a family involved and a neighbor’s cat and a Prairie Forest and a flock of songbirds and a visit from a couple of grandparents you will not want to miss. And a bigger story that takes several hundred time-lapsed years to unfold... and all of it is told in an epic poem of less than 16,000 words.

With 23 illustrations by Vera Kulikov.

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NOTICE: This book contains realistic depictions of predatory and territorial canine behaviors, including violence (dog vs. coyote vs. small animals). Though the violence is mitigated for inclusion of young readers (ages 9-12), its import is not lessened for adults. Parental guidance suggested.

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About the Author:

Ryan Petty lives in a ferryboat town near Seattle with his wife Melissa and the ghost of their Alaskan Malamute—Kodiak.

Ryan studied creative writing at Princeton under Jerzy Kosinski and Anthony Burgess and was, for a decade thereafter, the proprietor of Austin, Texas-based Cold Mountain Press, a publisher of signed, limited editions in poetry and fiction.

Ryan writes novels in verse; historical fiction; and books for children. As this book goes to press, he’s working with illustrator Vera Kulikov on a children’s picture book which, he promises, is not about Elves.

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*Technically, Kodiak is both an epic poem and a novel in verse. Such works are also sometimes called narrative poems, story poems, free verse novels, fiction poems, and poem stories. Differences are subtle and such phrases are used almost interchangeably. The key to all of them is that the story come first: A good one uses the tools of poetry to make the narrative vivid and move it forward in ways—and at a pace—that prose cannot. But for all the effort a writer might put into poetic language, a great one must first have at its heart a great story.

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Ryan Petty lives in a ferryboat town near Seattle with his wife Melissa and the ghost of their Alaskan Malamute--Kodiak.He studied creative writing at Princeton under Jerzy Kosinski and Anthony Burgess and was, for a decade thereafter, the proprietor of Austin, Texas-based Cold Mountain Press, publisher of signed, limited editions in poetry and fiction.Ryan writes novels in verse; historical fiction; and books for children. As this book goes to press, he's working with illustrator Vera Kulikov on his first children's picture book-a story that isn't about Elves.