Who wrote "The Pet Goat" of 9-11 ?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been trying to find a copy of the book Bush read to schoolkids on the morning of 9-11, but am having little luck. Despite all the various timelines, its not clear whether the president was reading a story titled “Pet Goat” or “The Pet Goat,” or from a book with a similar name. Does anyone know just what it was he was reading from, who wrote it, and where I can find a copy?

2

After poking about on the internet looking this up, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is an apocryphal tale. For one thing, I can find no reputable souces which carry this story. Pleny of message board topics and conspiracy-theory sites pop up, but not one credible journalism site, like CNN or anything. For another, neither Barnes and Noble or Amazon have this title listed, or anything close to it. Until someone can provide a reliable cite for this even, I shall raise my eyebrow at it thusly: :dubious:

3

Not that it answers the original question, but from the Wall Street Journal:

4

You can see a video of the event in question at this site

http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/2002/06/12_BookerLinks.html
from Buzzflash News.

The title is “The Pet Goat”

There are links to a video, but I had lots of problems getting it to play - it takes quite a while for it to load.

5

This link gave me better results than the Buzzflash ones linked to in Lyllyan’s post.

It’s most definitely a story called “The Pet Goat”, QED, although it’s unclear whether or not that’s the book title or merely one of the stories in a collection.

6

[QUOTE=Antonius BlockIt’s most definitely a story called “The Pet Goat”, QED, although it’s unclear whether or not that’s the book title or merely one of the stories in a collection.[/QUOTE]

I’m still looking. Unfortunately, nearly every sigle result returned by Google references the Bush story, and none give any further details about it. It also appears to be the title of an album by Ill Gotten Gainz.

7

Could it be The Very Hungry Caterpillar? That’s the book George W. Bush always reads to kids whenever he does one of those photo-ops.

8

To add some closure to this:

A very good researcher on Google Answers tracked this down: it’s from a reading textbook called Reading Mastery II, Storybook 1, by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine Bruner

9

Thanks SmackFu!

10

The story can be found here. Oddly enough, it seems to end on a cliffhanger:

11

It’s painful to see that American schoolchildren are being taught that “robber” and “thief” are synonyms.

A) The malefactor has designs on the car itself, not its contents.
B) He is not menacing anyone or threatening physical harm in order to secure the car.

Argh. Reading material that’s sub-literate, combined with that freaky martial drum-major reading method? No wonder kids are in trouble.

12

As the Master explains, even the classic “Dick and Jane” reader was not without its problems: How do you diagram the sentence, “See Spot run”?
Those of us who wanted to read learned anyway.

13

Ima Blivious