Dog to a legend now in book form

A comic novel, centered around Marilyn Monroe's dog, will hit the shelves in December.

"The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe" is by Andrew O'Hagan.

Read the full story from cnn.com.

According to the book's description, Maf — short for Mafia — met everybody who is anybody during his time with the actress, including President John F. Kennedy, and accompanied the silver screen star to acting classes, chi-chi restaurants, department stores and to Mexico for her divorce from playwright Arthur Miller.

"Marilyn was a strange and unhappy creature, but at the same time she had more natural comedy to her than anybody I would ever know," observes Maf, who was 3 when Monroe died in 1962 at age 36.

O'Hagan has said that Hollywood is interested in making a movie about Maf and Monroe.

Who will it star, I wonder?

Book 'em

While we wait patiently for the president to return from Europe, so the really important things can happen — like getting a dog for your kids — USA Today has a story about two books written about the First Dog.

They are:

Which Puppy? (Simon & Schuster, $16.99, ages 4-8) will be released April 7; First Dog (Sleeping Bear, $15.95, ages 4-8) arrives April 15.

Which Puppy? is written by Kate Feiffer.

Feiffer, 45, quickly wrote a story and enlisted her father, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer, 80, to do the illustrations. He spent three weeks "drawing dogs day and night."

I love Jules Feiffer's cartoons, especially those in the New Yorker, when he would draw someone doing an interpretive dance.

The other book is by another set of close relations.

Meanwhile, another father-daughter team, J. Patrick Lewis, 66, and Beth Zappitello, 44, had just handed in a manuscript about an "All-American mutt" in a global quest for a perfect home. The day after the election, their editor asked if they could revise the book. The result is First Dog, illustrated by Tim Bowers.