3-5)Ī hare and a ground squirrel banter about the differences between related animals that are often confused for one another. This is a tremendously moving story, but some people will be moved only on the second reading, after they’ve Googled “How to pet a porcupine.” (Picture book. It’s an apt, touching moral, but the climax may confuse some readers as they try to figure out the precise mechanics of the embrace. It turns out that a porcupine can give a perfectly adequate hug when its quills are flat and relaxed, but no one stays around long enough to find out except for an animal that has its own experiences with intolerance: a snake. The story is a sort of fable about tolerance. These silent reaction shots not only show exquisite comic timing, but they make the rhymes in the text feel pleasingly subtle by delaying the final line in each stanza. Each animal takes a moment to think over the request, and the drawings are nuanced enough that readers can see the creatures react with slowly building anxiety or, sometimes, a glassy stare. But the understated moments are even funnier. The repetitive structure gives Blabey plenty of opportunities for humor, because every animal responds to the question with an outlandish, pop-eyed expression of panic. Will you cuddle me,…?” As they flee, each utters a definitive refusal that rhymes with their name. In this picture book, a bear and a deer, along with a small rabbit, each run away when they hear eight simple words and their name: “I need a hug. The pages have action without clutter, and Louie has a little chicken-necked balloon head with brown skin, feverish red cheeks, and the most splendid mauve pajamas.įor a book that really comes down to a sick kid yelping for his mother, his nose so clogged it needs dynamite to clear, the story has a lot of adorable acreage.Ī hug shouldn’t require an instruction manual-but some do.Ī porcupine can frighten even the largest animal. Scanlon and Vernick’s text is sweet without treacle, and it gives Little Louie’s long-suffering couple of sick days a good ride. Little Louie tries again: “I wan by BOB, not BOB!” (Sharp-eyed youngsters will note that one “Bob” has a heart in the middle of the O, and one does not.) Soon enough, kids will figure it out: it’s a case of the stuffed-nose, missing M. And when you get a nasty cold, well, “maybe his mom should check on him kind of often.” The cry goes out: “BOB!” Now, as it happens, the house pooch, an ever faithful Great Dane, is named Bob. A nasty cold: ears crackled, brain full of sog, nose dripping enough mucus to launch a ship.
Little Louie, a young-well, “it wasn’t like he needed his mom every minute of the day”-black kid, has caught a cold.
When you’re sick and stuffy, some letters-like T’s and L’s and M’s-disappear.
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