Diary of a Pug: Pug Blasts Off

by Kyla May

Baron von Bubbles—Bub for short—is a pug with strong opinions about his own cuteness and the world around him. In this illustrated, diary-format adventure, Bub tries to help his human, Bella, with her school Inventor Challenge project, accidentally ruins it, and must find a way to make things right.

Big Idea

Good intentions do not always lead to good results, but taking responsibility can help repair a mistake and a friendship. Bub's diary also shows how a distinctive narrator, pictures, and changes in pacing can turn an everyday problem into an engaging adventure.

Discussion Questions

1.How does Bub's view of himself affect the way he tells us about helping Bella? What might Bella describe differently?
2.When Bub accidentally ruins Bella's project, what changes for each character? What words or pictures help you understand their feelings?
3.What is the difference between wanting to help and actually being helpful? How could Bub find out what Bella needs?
4.Which part of Bub's adventure feels fastest or slowest to you? How do the writing and illustrations create that feeling?
5.What does making things right require after an accident? How does Bub's experience connect to a situation you have experienced or imagined?

Classroom Activity

Bub's Oops-to-Repair Diary

Students create a four-panel illustrated diary from Bub's point of view: wanting to help Bella, accidentally damaging her project, recognizing the problem, and planning a thoughtful repair. They use quick action language for fast moments and slower, descriptive language for emotional beats.

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes, following a prior reading of the book or selected excerpts.📦 A copy of the book, paper, pencils, crayons or markers, index cards, scrap cardstock, tape, glue sticks, child-safe scissors, and optional sticky notes.

Learning Goals

Identify Bub, Bella, the central problem, and the relationship between actions and consequences.
Explain how Bub’s first-person perspective shapes the reader’s understanding of events.
Create a sequenced illustrated narrative with an intention, a mishap, and an attempted repair.
Use sentence length, punctuation, picture placement, or oral delivery to create contrasting story speeds.
Describe a responsible response to an accidental mistake that considers another person’s feelings.

Activity Steps

1.Read or revisit selected passages about Bella’s Inventor Challenge and Bub’s accidental damage. Chart what Bub wants, what happens, and how each character might feel; distinguish textual evidence from inference.
2.Invite pairs to sketch and build a small paper invention that could help Bella organize or protect her project materials. Explain its intended purpose; no working mechanism is required.
3.Plan three diary sections: 'I wanted to help,' 'Oops!' and 'How I could make it right.' Students may draw and dictate, write short captions, or compose paragraphs according to readiness.
4.Draft in Bub’s first-person voice. Make the mishap quick through brief action statements or successive pictures, then slow the reflection with a feeling, a noticed detail, or a thoughtful question.
5.Illustrate the diary and share it with a partner. The listener identifies the fastest moment, the slowest moment, and whether the repair responds to Bella’s needs.
6.Revise one pacing choice and one responsibility detail. Close with an exit response explaining how the student helped the reader notice action or emotion.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RL.K.3 / RL.1.3 — Identify characters, settings, and major events; describe them using key details.
ELA: CCSS RL.3.6 — Distinguish the reader’s point of view from that of the narrator or characters.
Writing: CCSS W.K.3 / W.2.3 / W.5.3 — Develop narratives through drawing, dictating, or writing, with increasingly clear sequencing, details, and pacing.
Speaking and Listening: CCSS SL.1.1 / SL.3.1 / SL.5.1 — Participate in collaborative discussions, listen to others, and build on ideas.
SEL: Self-awareness, social awareness, and responsible decision-making — Recognize feelings, consider another person’s needs, and plan a constructive response to a mistake.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

In Diary of a Pug: Pug Blasts Off, an ordinary school project becomes a significant adventure because readers experience it through Bub’s opinions and emotions. His diary format makes storytelling feel personal: he is not simply reporting what happened but revealing how he understands it. Although listed here as a picture book, this illustrated early chapter book offers useful opportunities to study how prose, pictures, and page design share the storytelling work. For a Pace-Write-Read study, revisit the sequence surrounding Bub’s attempt to help Bella and the project’s accidental damage. Ask students where they want to read quickly and where they need time to look, think, or feel. Separate story time from reading time: a brief mishap can receive substantial attention, while a longer stretch of events can be summarized in little space. Have students support their observations with features visible in the selected pages rather than assuming that every action scene must be fast. Move from noticing to making. Students can borrow Bub’s first-person approach, create a quick sequence of actions, and then pause for a reflection about Bella’s feelings. Younger learners can express these contrasts through drawings and oral storytelling; older learners can revise sentence length, paragraph breaks, and the balance of scene and summary. The goal is purposeful control of the reader’s experience, not simply writing faster.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Compare the reading experience around Bub’s mishap with a moment when he considers Bella or his next action. Ask which words, pictures, or breaks encourage speed and which invite a pause.
Plot	Map the central chain: Bella has an Inventor Challenge project, Bub tries to help, the project is accidentally ruined, and he must respond. Discuss how each event creates a reason for the next.
Prosody	Read a selected diary passage aloud using expression that fits Bub’s confidence, alarm, or concern. Try a second delivery and discuss how emphasis and pauses change the listener’s impression.
Word	Collect words from a selected passage that reveal Bub’s attitude or signal action. Replace one with a calmer or more energetic alternative and compare the effect without presenting the revision as the author’s wording.
Concept	Explore the distinction between intending to help and actually being helpful through Bub and Bella’s project. Turn that abstract idea into a concrete action a character could take.
Voice & Worldview	Notice how Bub’s belief in his own cuteness colors his storytelling. Ask how a pug’s priorities can make the Inventor Challenge look different from the way Bella sees it.
Point of View	Identify first-person language in Bub’s diary and discuss what readers learn directly from him. Rewrite or dictate the same mishap from Bella’s perspective, marking her thoughts as imagined.
Setting & Place	Use the words and illustrations to identify where a selected project scene occurs and how materials occupy that space. Discuss how the location makes Bub’s attempt to help possible or difficult.
Original Characters	Explain what makes Bub more specific than a generic story dog: his name, self-image, relationship with Bella, and distinctive reactions. Give an invented animal narrator an equally particular attitude.
Dialogue	Locate an exchange between characters and distinguish spoken words from Bub’s private narration. Discuss whether the exchange moves the action forward, reveals feelings, or does both.
Details	Choose a small textual or visual detail connected to Bella’s project and explain what it helps readers understand. Students add one useful detail to their own diary rather than decorating every sentence.
Descriptions	Compare a passage that describes a character or object with one that reports an action. Ask how stopping to describe Bella’s project could make readers understand its importance before the mishap.
Firsts	Study the first introduction of Bub and the first mention of Bella’s Inventor Challenge. Ask what readers learn at each entrance and what they still want to discover.
Immediacy & Engagement	Notice how access to Bub’s personal reactions brings readers close to his experience. Students write an opening that puts their reader beside Bub as he notices Bella’s project.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Find a moment presented through specific actions or an exchange, then compare it with narration that compresses events. Examine how diary entries organize Bub’s experiences into readable units.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Pause before the project mishap or before Bub’s next response and ask what readers expect. Trace how concern for Bella and uncertainty about Bub’s choices create tension without requiring a villain.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check selected entries for references to earlier events, imagined future outcomes, or unresolved stopping points; do not assume all three devices appear. As an extension, write a clearly invented entry ending that leaves Bub’s next move uncertain.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Inspect an actual page turn or chapter ending near an important event. Identify what readers know before the break and what the next page reveals.
Pace & Creativity	Retell Bub’s accidental damage once in a single sentence and once through three brief illustrated beats. Compare which version gives more room for surprise, humor, or emotion.
Play	Invite students to imagine how Bub would interpret ordinary invention supplies from a dog’s perspective. Keep the playful ideas tied to his desire to be involved with Bella.
Performance	Perform a short diary selection with one student narrating and another silently showing Bub’s reactions. Use movement and stillness to test where the scene benefits from speed or a pause.
Personality	Track how Bub’s self-confidence and attachment to Bella influence his decisions. Students choose a consistent personality trait to shape both the helping attempt and the response to failure.
Humor	Look for differences between how Bub describes himself or his actions and what readers can infer from the pictures. Discuss how the story can make a mistake funny while still treating Bella’s feelings seriously.
Pause	After reading about the ruined project, pause to consider what Bub and Bella might each need. In student writing, add a quiet reaction between the accident and the attempted solution.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Listen for any sound play, repeated sounds, or vivid comparisons in the chosen excerpt; poetry need not be present for this study. Students may experiment with an original sound effect or comparison for Bub’s mishap.
Repetition	Look for recurring words, ideas, or visual reactions associated with Bub. Discuss whether a recurrence builds familiarity, emphasizes his personality, or changes meaning after his mistake.
Rhythm	Read several consecutive sentences from Bub’s diary and listen to their lengths and patterns. Try alternating short action statements with a longer reflection about Bella to create a different rhythm.
Punctuation	Examine punctuation in an expressive passage and demonstrate its effect aloud. Students choose marks that communicate Bub’s reaction clearly rather than adding exclamation points everywhere.
Questions	Track the questions the story raises, such as whether Bub can help and how he will respond to the damage. Place an original question in a diary entry to direct attention toward his next decision.
Compare-Contrast	Compare Bub’s intentions with the actual outcome of his help. Then compare what the project means to Bella with what involvement in it means to Bub.
Objects	Treat Bella’s project as an object with emotional and plot importance, not merely a prop. Identify which visible materials matter to understanding the mishap and its consequences.
Threes	Check whether any selected sequence naturally forms three beats rather than assuming the book uses a rule of three. For practice, organize an original Bub scene as intention, accident, and response.
Lists	If a selected page contains a list, examine how it organizes information and changes the reading rhythm. Otherwise, create an original list of Bub’s proposed ways to help Bella and choose the most considerate one.
White Space & Negative Space	Inspect the space around text and illustrations on a selected diary page. Ask where the eye rests and how adding or removing space might change the emphasis on Bub’s reaction.
Art & Graphics	Read the illustrations for clues about expressions, actions, and the project that the narration may not fully explain. Discuss how seeing Bub can confirm or complicate his own account.
Interactives & Gamification	Create a classroom prediction game at a stopping point: students suggest Bub’s next action and explain their reasoning. This is a teaching extension, not a claim that the book contains game features.
Placement	Examine where a revealing picture, reaction, or important sentence sits on an actual page. Students test whether placing their mishap before or after a page turn changes its impact.
Form	Discuss how an illustrated diary differs from an outside narrator’s continuous account. Bub’s personal entries allow students to explore opinion, selective reporting, and the relationship between words and pictures.
Dummy	Make a folded-paper mock-up of an original three-part Bub diary scene before finishing it. Move captions and drawings to test page turns, space, and the placement of the accident.
Passion	Connect Bella’s investment in her invention with Bub’s desire to be part of her life. Ask students to choose something their narrator cares about so the problem and attempted repair feel meaningful.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: 'Fast Oops, Slow Fix.' Materials: paper, pencils, and crayons; use a previously read passage about Bub’s accidental damage as the anchor. Minutes 0–3: Revisit the passage and identify Bub’s intention and the consequence for Bella. Minutes 3–5: Fold paper into three panels labeled 'Helping,' 'Oops!' and 'Making It Right.' Explain that students will invent a possible response rather than reproduce or claim to quote the ending. Minutes 5–11: Write and illustrate in Bub’s first-person voice. Give the mishap two or three quick action beats, then slow the final panel with a noticed detail, a feeling, and a considerate next step. Emerging writers may draw and dictate; older students should vary sentence length and include reflection. Minutes 11–16: Partners read their diaries aloud, speeding up or slowing down where the writing invites it; listeners point to the feature that guided them. Minutes 16–19: Revise one sentence, caption, picture placement, or pause to strengthen the contrast. Minute 19–20: Share an exit statement: 'I made this part feel faster or slower by ____, and Bub’s repair considers Bella by ____.'