The Pet Goat

"The Pet Goat"
Author	Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Children's fiction
Publisher	McGraw-Hill
Publication date	1995

"The Pet Goat" (often erroneously called "My Pet Goat") is a children's story from the 1995 book Reading Mastery II: Storybook 1 by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner. It gained attention on September 11, 2001; U.S. President George W. Bush was reading the story at the Emma E. Booker School in Sarasota, Florida, when he was informed of the ongoing terror attacks.

"The Pet Goat" is the story of a girl's pet goat that 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 thief into submission.

The book was written by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner and is part of the 31-volume Reading Mastery series published by the SRA Macmillan early-childhood education division of McGraw-Hill. It uses the Direct Instruction (DI) teaching method, which was originally developed by Engelmann and Wesley C. Becker.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, some time around 9:10, in front of a sign stating "READING MAKES A COUNTRY GREAT", George W. Bush was reading the The Pet Goat while also listening to it being recited by a group of schoolchildren at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota County, Florida, just after White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card informed him that a second airplane had just hit the World Trade Center. Bush remained seated for roughly seven minutes and followed along as the children read the book. After spending about 20 minutes total with the children, Bush was scheduled to give a short press conference at about 9:30 a.m. At the conference inside the school, Bush made his first speech about the attacks and was later taken to a secure location by the Secret Service aboard Air Force One before returning to the White House later that evening.

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