Margaret Atwood has released another tongue-twisting children's book, taking on letters "B" and "D" in the tale of Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda.

"Kids love it when their parents get cotton-mouthed," Atwood told Canada AM's Seamus O'Regan.

Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda is the third book in an alliterative series which began with Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes and followed up by Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut.

"I wrote that on the train to Windsor, which lasts about three hours," she said.

Bob is a boy who has been raised by a trio of dogs after being "abandoned in a basket, beside a beauty parlour."

Dorinda, on the other hand, was "dumped on despicable relatives after a dreadful disaster made her parents disappear."

"She meets up with Bob and she has to teach him how to speak with the aid of a dictionary and they do a daring deed together," Atwood said.

The award-winning author, who has penned international bestsellers including The Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace, said she is currently working on the letter "W".

Atwood, however, has not forgotten about her older readers. She's released her second collection of essays entitled, Moving Targets, a companion volume to Second Words, which had works dating up to 1982.

"I do these journalistic and magazine pieces. I probably do about 20 of them a year. So you can see we had to go through a great wad of stuff to pick out what we're going to put into the book," she told Canada AM.

In Moving Targets, Atwood discusses her concern for the environment and the future of humanity. She also includes two controversial political pieces, "Napoleon's Two Biggest Mistakes" and "Letters to America" that warn about the consequences of the war in Iraq.

When asked about Canada's relationship with the U.S., Atwood said, "Let's be realistic. We've got 31 million people. They've got 280 million. It's never going to be an equal relationship."

However, Atwood believes Canada possesses a resource that the U.S. will increasingly need.

"Let's all think about the "W" word, water, and how that's going to play out. That is going to be one of the themes of the next 30 years."

The following is an excerpt from Atwood's Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda:

When Bob was a baby, he was abandoned in a basket, beside a beauty parlour. His bubbleheaded mum, a brunette, had become a blond in the beauty parlour, and was so blinded by her burnished brilliance that baby Bob was blotted from her brain. By and by she became dismayed, and bought an advertisement—"Baby in basket. Does not have a bat-shaped birthmark"—but it drew a blank. Bob boo-hooed until he was blue from bonnet to bottom, but nobody came.

Luckily, beside the beauty parlour there was a vacant block, bestrewn with bushes, buttercups, and benches. It was beloved of dogs, who would bounce balls and bury bones there. A boxer, a beagle, and a borzoi heard Bob's bawling. "Is it a buppy?" said the boxer, who talked through his nose. "No, it's a biped," replied the beagle. "It must be a bird!" "Not a bird, a baby! What bad behaviour, to abandon it!" barked the borzoi. "We must be benevolent!"

The boxer, the beagle, and the borzoi bounded into boutiques and burgled bundle buggies. They brought baby Bob bottles, booties, and blankets. When Bob became bigger, they brought bananas, blueberries, baked beans, beets, and broccoli. The broccoli made Bob burp.

The dogs were Bob's best buddies. They besieged bargain basements, and brought Bob balloons, basketballs, blue jeans, and boxes of building blocks. They also brought bundles of buttered bread, barrelsful of bran flakes, and bunches of bunches of blackberries. Bombarded with abundant edible boodle, Bob became even bigger. Soon he was no longer a baby, but a boy.

But Bob was bashful. He did not believe he was a boy, and barked when bothered. He was bewildered by blithering barbers, blathering butchers, bun-bearing bakers, and belligerent bus drivers, and would bound behind bushes or burrow under benches when they blundered by. He would bite busy businessmen in their briefcases. "Bob is a boy," said the borzoi. "He does not belong with dogs." "It is not broper," said the boxer. "What will become of him?" said the beagle. Bob's dog buddies were bemused.

On a block beside Bob lived Doleful Dorinda. Dorinda's dad and darling mother had disappeared in a dreadful disaster when she was still in diapers, and she had been dumped on distant relatives.

Reprinted with permission from Key Porter Books.