The Pet Goat

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"The Pet Goat" (sometimes erroneously referred to as "My Pet Goat") is a children's story contained in the book Reading Mastery II: Storybook 1, by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner (ISBN 0-02-686355-3). The book is part of the thirty-one volume Reading Mastery series published by the SRA Macmillan early-childhood education division of McGraw-Hill. It uses the direct instruction teaching style.

The story gained notoriety when U.S. President George W. Bush read it along with a group of schoolchildren at Emma E. Booker Elementary School, as then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card informed him of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Contents

[edit] Plot

"The Pet Goat" is the story of a girl's pet goat which eats everything in its path. The girl's parents want to get rid of the goat, but she defends it. In the end, the goat becomes a hero when it butts a car robber into submission.

[edit] Bush's 2001 reading of the book

George W. Bush reads "The Pet Goat" along with school children on September 11, 2001
George W. Bush reads "The Pet Goat" along with school children on September 11, 2001

After Card informed him that the second plane had hit the second tower, Bush continued reading the book for over seven minutes. Bush's critics, notably Michael Moore in his film Fahrenheit 9/11, have argued that the fact that Bush continued to read the book after being notified of the attacks shows that he was indecisive. Others have asked if this is all the information Bush needed to fully comprehend the situation. After spending about twenty minutes with the children, Bush was scheduled to give a short press conference at about 9:30. At the press conference inside the same school, Bush made his first speech about the attacks, and was never evacuated by the Secret Service.[1] According to Bill Sammon in Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism from Inside the White House, Bush's then-Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was in the back of the classroom holding a pad on which he had written "DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET."[2]

Shortly after Moore's movie opened in theaters, Amazon.com sold out of all copies of the book, with a one-month backorder, and users posted satirical reviews of the book criticizing Bush. Amazon has since deleted these reviews, though new ones continue to appear.[3]

Osama bin Laden made reference to the story in a videotaped speech released just prior to the 2004 U.S. presidential election, claiming that Bush's reading of the book had given the hijackers more than enough time to carry out the attacks.[4]

[edit] References

  • Engelmann, Siegfried; Elaine C. Bruner (1995). Reading Mastery II: Storybook 1, Rainbow ed., Worthington, Ohio: SRA Macmillan/McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-574-10128-4. 

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Adair, Bill; Hegarty, Stephen (2002-09-08). The drama in Sarasota. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved on 2007-06-15.
  2. ^ Sammon, Bill. "Suddenly, a time to lead", The Washington Times, October 7, 2002. Retrieved on 2006-03-20. 
  3. ^ Several websites have kept copies of some of the fake reviews; see for example http://www.sadlyno.com/uploads/sadlynogoats.htm
  4. ^ Osama bin Laden. "Full Transcript of Bin Ladin's Speech", Aljazeera.net, Al Jazeera, November 1, 2004. Retrieved on 2006-03-20. 

[edit] External links