Flatulent dogs can be heroic

It’s tough to gain acceptance when you’re socially unacceptable.

That’s what Walter is. That’s what anyone would be who couldn’t control certain of his own bodily functions.

Walter, you see, is the protagonist of a book series that began with “Walter the Farting Dog” (North Atlantic Books, 2001), written by prolific children’s author William Kotzwinkle (“The Bear Went Over the Mountain”), his friend Glenn Murray and illustrator Audrey Colman. And the book’s title says it all.

Well, not all. If you were to go solely by the title, you might think that Kotzwinkle and company were simply telling a poop joke. Which, of course, they aren’t.

The title doesn’t, for example, tell about the books’ messages of heroism, of compassion and of acceptance. And it certainly doesn’t say anything about the struggle that the authors had getting publishers to take the project seriously.

“It took us 10 years to get it in print,” said Murray, who will read from the third book in the series, “Rough Weather Ahead for Walter the Farting Dog” (Dutton’s Children Books, 32 pages, $24), at a special children’s event Saturday at 2 p.m. at Auntie’s Bookstore.

But when a small California publisher did pick the first book up in 2001, “Walter” was a hit. It made The New York Times best-seller list and has sold more than half a million copies – many moving in the annual Christmas rush.

The book’s success has inspired a line of children’s toys and a movie project along with the sequels, which were bought by the New York publisher Dutton.

The original “Walter” was a simple story of a family father who, tired of his gaseous pet, decides to sell him to the pound. But the night before the deed, burglars break in, Walter lets loose and … well, you can guess the rest.

In the second book, father actually does sell Walter at a yard sale to a man who ends up using the heroic dog’s gases to fill up children’s balloons so he can rob a bank. Walter again finds a way to make sure that justice is done.

In the latest story line, a scientist comes to visit Walter. He puts Walter on a diet, which stops the emissions – but not the gas. Walter blows up like a balloon, flies away high in the sky, but ends up helping a flight of stricken butterflies. Hero time again.

Not everyone has been happy with the books. A school district in Wisconsin decided to retain the first book despite the complaint of a parent offended both by its language and by Colman’s illustrations, which the complaining parent said “kind of make you sick, too.”

Murray isn’t too worried. He quit his job as a New Brunswick, N.J., educator to promote the “Walter” books full time, which keeps him busy and on the road.

And, he said in a phone interview, he’s confident that most people will see past the use of the controversial F-word – the flatulent one – and appreciate what the book actually says.

“To me, it’s really a story of acceptance and turning liabilities into assets,” he said.