'Farting Dog' Hits Best-Seller List

Oct. 2 -- Walter the Farting Dog is less Lassie than gassy, but that hasn't stopped the pungent pooch from reaching his unlikely perch at the top of the best-seller list.

It was no easy climb for the malodorous mutt. A decade of rejection "passed" before Berkeley, Calif.-based Frog, Ltd. and North Atlantic Books agreed to publish the title. Since then, Walter has held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times Book Review list (Children's Picture category) five times in more than 30 weeks.

Co-author William Kotzwinkle, also the author of ET The Extraterrestrial, recalled of the various publishers who declined to work with him and fellow author, Glenn Murray: "They invariably said, 'We laughed and we laughed. But of course we can't publish it. — This attitude is still around today. There are several mass merchandisers who refuse to carry Walter."

The problem is the book's quotient for queasiness: Walter's main character suffers from intestinal gas, expelled from the, you-know, constantly. Illustrator Audrey Colman makes no bones about it — the book's cover shows Walter, hind leg aloft, with a toxic cloud of mottled, slightly greenish fumes escaping from his rear.

Canine Conundrum Pungent but Popular

"I can see why some people would be reluctant," acknowledged Sunny Takahashi, a first-grade teacher in the Centralia School District in Southern California. "A lot of people love the book Everyone Poops [by author Taro Gomi], but no one will read it to students. … There's such a fine line between what's OK and what is not."

But the book has won fans in unlikely places. Publisher's Weekly reported this summer that a privately-owned book shop in Woodstock, Vt., sold 1,000 copies. (The New York City chains ABCNEWS spoke to averaged two to four per week, per store, over the last year.) Overall, more than 150,000 copies of Walter have sold in the United States and Canada since the book's first printing in November 2001.

"Oh, I've heard of it," said Yolanda P., who works in the children's section of a major-chain book retailer in Manhattan. "It's extremely popular. People have read about it and ask for it by title."