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| Edition: | EGMONT CHILDREN'S (Paperback) |
| Author: | Dodie Smith |
| Published: | June 2006 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| ISBN 10: | 1405224800 |
| Used: | $0.58 (21) |
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The Hundred and One Dalmatians, or the Great Dog Robbery is a 1956 children's novel by Dodie Smith. The plot revolves around a woman who steals 97 dalmatian puppies in order to make a fur coat out of them. The protagonists of the novel are three adult dalmatians who set out to rescue their own puppies and wind up rescuing the whole lot. (The hundred-and-first dalmatian is part of a subplot unrelated to the puppy-snatching, and plays only a small part in the story.)
In the novel, after being invited to a dinner party by the Dearly couple, where Cruella de Vil expresses her dislike for animals, the family's new Dalmatian puppies disappear. The Dearly dogs are added to 82 puppies who are kidnapped or legally purchased from various owners, all of which have been gathered with the intent of skinning them for their fur, to make a coat. Through a fellowship of animals and the "Twilight Barking," the dogs are identified as being in Suffolk, and a rescue ensues.
The novel has been released under the title 101 Dalmatians, at least as far back as a 1989 Egmont UK Ltd release.
Smith wrote a sequel The Starlight Barking, which has never been filmed. Film companies have produced sequels to their film versions, but these are not based on Smith's writings.
Plot
Pongo and Missis Pongo (or just Missis) are a pair of Dalmatians. They live with the newly married Mr and Mrs Dearly (their "pets") and their two nannies, Nanny Cook and Nanny Butler, who have trained to be a real cook and a real butler. Mr Dearly is a "financial wizard" who has been granted exemption from income tax for life and lent a house by the Outer Circle of Regent's Park as a favour for wiping out the government's national debt.
Missis gives birth to a litter of 15 puppies, including the Cadpig, Lucky and Patch. The Dearlys are concerned that Missis will not be able to feed them all and Mrs Dearly looks for another dog to act as a wet nurse and by chance finds an abandoned Dalmatian mother in the middle of the road in the pouring rain. She has the dog treated by a vet and gives her the name Perdita, from the Latin for "lost". Later Perdita tells Pongo about her lost love (also a Dalmatian) and the circumstances that led to her being abandoned in the middle of the road.
Mr and Mrs Dearly are invited to a dinner party hosted by Cruella de Vil, an intimidating and very wealthy woman with one side of her hair coloured white and the other side coloured black. They meet her furrier husband and her abused cat, and discover her love of pepper, very high temperatures, and fixation with furs. They are disconcerted by her suggestion that animals which are not valuable should be drowned, including her own cat's kittens.
Shortly after the dinner party the puppies disappear. The humans fail to trace them but through the "Twilight Barking", a form of communication by which dogs can relay messages to each other across the country, the dogs manage to track them down to Hell Hall, in Suffolk.
Pongo and Missis try to explain to the Dearlys where the puppies are but fail. The dogs then take the decision to run away and find them. They explain to Perdita that she should stay behind and look after the Dearlys.
After a journey cross country, in which they are helped by many dogs, they are met by Lieutenant Pussy Willow (also known as Tibs), a tabby cat and the Colonel, an Old English Sheepdog who shows them Hell Hall, the ancestral home of the de Vil family, and tells them its history. He tells them to rest overnight and that they will see their puppies the next day. They then discover there are 97 puppies including their own 15 and many others who later turn out to have been legally bought. They also discover that the puppies are being kept in Hell Hall by Saul and Jasper Baddun, two crooks who work for Cruella de Vil as caretakers of Hell Hall. They also discover Cadpig's love of television.
They all decide that they should wait a few more weeks, before trying to escape, until the puppies are strong enough to make the journey back to London. But, Cruella de Vil appears in the middle of the night and tells the Baddun Brothers that the dogs must be slaughtered and skinned as soon as possible because of the publicity surrounding the theft of the Dearlys' pups. They agree with her, and decide that they will do the job that night, right after their favourite television's show, What's My Crime?, is over. Before leaving, Cruella says that she and her husband will be back first thing in the morning to see if the job is done. Not taking any chances, Pongo and Missis devise an escape plan and agree that they must take all the puppies with them, not just their own 15. They escape on that same night, the day before Christmas Eve.
Unfortunately, Cadpig is too weak to walk the long distance from Suffolk to London so she is lent a toy carriage by Tommy, the Colonel's 2-year-old "pet". After a quick rest on the farm, they all go on with their journey, while the Colonel and Lieutenant Willow try to hold up Jasper and Saul, who noticed that the puppies have escaped and are now looking for them. The Lieutenant and the Colonel are able to bite the crooks' legs and they run away back to Hell Hall. The group goes on, but when the cart loses a wheel, they have a rest on the hassocks of a country church to escape the cold. The group almost meet Cruella as she drives towards a burning building; Pongo says that they need a miracle and find one when they are offered a lift in a removal van. Having previously rolled in soot to disguise their white hair, they are able to hide in the darkness of the removal van with the help of a Staffordshire terrier whose pets are the movers.
When they arrive back in London they find Cruella's (empty) house. Her cat is still there and invites them in to destroy Cruella's collection of animal skins and fur coats. She gladly joins in as revenge for her lost kittens, destroying everything that is made out of fur, including Cruella's mink bedsheets.
The Dalmatians then return to the Dearlys' house where they are not recognised due to being covered in soot. They try again, bursting through the door and rolling around on the floor to get rid of the soot. Mr Dearly then recognises them and sends out for steaks to feed them.
Later, the cat drops by to tell them Cruella has fled. The shock of discovering her furs have been destroyed has turned the black side of her hair white and the white side green. The cat also says she has also abandoned Hell Hall, because she and her husband did not have the money to pay for the furs (most of them had not been paid for yet), and that Cruella's jewels (which had not been destroyed) would be used for them to open a new kind of business out of England. She also tells them that the Baddun Brothers had been arrested for hurting the man who tried to take their TV back, because it hadn't been paid. Hell Hall has been put up for sale and Mr Dearly buys it with a sum of money he has been given by the government for sorting out another tax problem. He renames it to Hill Hall and intends to use it to start a "dynasty of Dalmatians" (and a "dynasty of Dearlys" to take care of them). The cat is also adopted by the Dearlys, who promised her a white Persian husband (affirming that a "dynasty of cats" was also going to be established there), and starts a good friendship with Pussy Willow.
Finally, Perdita's lost love, Prince (the one hundred and first Dalmatian) visits. His "pets" can clearly see that the two wish to be together and allow him to stay with the Dearlys.
