Despite its self-help title, former Burley teacher Cory S. Williamson's first book is a story - with likeable characters and an engaging plot.

A story perfectly suitable for reading aloud with the family.

"Throw Your Kid a Bone: A Novel Perspective on the Dogma of Parenting" draws not-too-subtle parallels between the training of a dog named Nipper and the parenting of 6-year-old Billy. With chapter titles like "Obedience School" and "The Leash," it celebrates discipline, work and order.

But it stops short of exhortation, instead using little Billy's point of view to tell about the summer leading up to his seventh birthday and his longing for a particular black dirt bike.

Williamson set the story in Twin Cricks, a fictional farming-and-mining town near the Snake River, somewhere in green Jell-O territory.

"I think it represents most small towns in Idaho," Williamson said by telephone from California, where he's a business development manager for Apple.

He purposely left the word "Idaho" out of his story, but he thought of Gooding - where Williamson's mother grew up - when he wrote that Billy's mom "grew up on a dry farm just north of the Snake River."

In fact, Williamson modeled Billy's parents after his own, Glen and Annell Williamson of Georgetown, and wrote "Throw Your Kid a Bone" as a gift to them.

"I want to be very careful not to imply that this is a memoir, because it's not," Williamson said.

But many of Billy's experiences come from Williamson's own childhood. (Yes, he was caught in a manure pit, though not up to his armpits.) The book's parenting techniques are from his past, too.

"The impetus for the book was to come up with a strategy for raising my own kids. And as it turned out, as I did my research, I realized that the best source I had for raising my kids was probably my own parents," Williamson said. "I didn't paint my parents as perfect, but they were good enough. They were better than average, I guess, but they were also fallible, like every parent."

After new carpet is installed, Billy's father makes a rule about kids not eating in the living room. Predictably, Dad is responsible for the carpet's first stain.

It's an orderly home, where Sunday school is mandatory, Dad insists on table manners, Mom bakes raspberry pie, nobody gets a new dirt bike without saving for it and everyone has assigned chores - with suitable punishment for ditching an assigned morning of weeding the beans. That punishment is weeding the peas, too. Other offenses merit cayenne on the tongue or an extended sit on a wooden chair.

Williamson provides two other families as foils: Billy's disobedient, whiny pair of cousins who know their parents are all bark and no bite, and the bickering next-door neighbors with trash on their lawn and clutter in their house. The kids next door are unhappy despite cable TV, no rules and an unlimited supply of pop. One girl shows up with a mysterious bruise under her eye; another gets pregnant.

Yes, it's clear what lessons Williamson hopes to teach young readers and their parents. (Getting mired in a dairy-manure pit you've been told to stay away from is a danger of disobedience.) But Williamson delivers those lessons in funny dialogue and a story that's not didactic enough to lose its charm.

Virginia Hutchins may be reached at 735-3242 or virginia.hutchins@lee.net.

About Cory S. Williamson Williamson, 35, who grew up in Georgetown in southeastern Idaho, taught English and was an assistant wrestling coach at Burley High School for two years, in 1999-2001. He worked in McCall as a smokejumper during and after those years, and he has relatives in the Burley, Jerome, Gooding and Fairfield areas. He holds an English degree from Utah State University and an MBA from Brigham Young University. Today he's a business development manager for Apple in Cupertino, Calif., and lives in Palo Alto with his wife and three children. Writing is a hobby. Williamson's first book, "Throw Your Kid a Bone: A Novel Perspective on the Dogma of Parenting," was self-published through print-on-demand publisher Lulu and is distributed through Williamson's company, Coyote Book. The books sells for $14.95 through www.coyotebook.com and Amazon.com. The book's illustrations are Williamson's own.