Elmore

A lonely porcupine, his friendship rejected by the other woodland creatures, finds a way to bridge the divide.

Poignantly, Elmore ponders his long-standing difficulty making friends. “What was the problem? After all, the ‘L’ in Elmore’s name, his mother once explained, stood for ‘love.’ ” After posting a “Friends Wanted” sign on his beloved old maple, he overhears the scuttlebutt: “He’s too prickly. It’s hard to be around him.” After a rainy day of rumination about his quills—which his bucolic lifestyle would seem to render superficial—Elmore’s visited by his uncle. When Elmore explains his quandary, his uncle delivers an affirming message: “Your quills are beautiful. You should treasure them.” Uplifted, Elmore later regards the quills strewn about his home and gets an idea. (Amusingly, Hobbie depicts his comfy chair bristling with them.) He bundles quills together and posts a new sign, offering free “100% real Porcupine quills” to be used as pens. The “quill event” is a big success: Elmore suggests making ink from berries. “Everyone loves getting a note from a friend,” he says—and soon, he’s getting plenty. He happily regards a new maple-tree posting: an appreciation signed “Your friends.” Hobbie’s signature watercolors depict gently anthropomorphized animals amid a lovely woodland meadow dotted with yellow poppies. Verbally and visually, she thoughtfully contextualizes such concepts as “solitude” and “to treasure.”

"Friends Wanted" reads the sign that Elmore, a self-sufficient but solitary porcupine, posts in the woods. There are no takers--everyone is scared of his quills. "I'm your friend," says his elderly uncle. "That's different," replies Elmore in an exchange that should resonate with any children familiar with the attempted consolations of adults. When Elmore's uncle insists that his quills are "beautiful" and define who he is, Elmore is inspired. He realizes that his "troublesome quills" make great pens, and in what Hobbie (A Cat Named Swan) wryly refers to as "the quill event," he gives away bundles of them to everyone in the forest. Elmore is neither needy nor pathetic; in fact, he emphasizes that the quills are "100% real porcupine quills" and reminds the other animals, "Everyone loves getting a note from a friend." After having fun writing with Elmore's once-feared quills, the animals see him in a new way. Hobbie's story is proffered with a light touch, a full heart, breezily charming artwork, and an ingenious protagonist. And her lesson never loses its profundity: being appreciated by others starts with appreciating oneself. Ages 3-7. (Jan.)

PreS-Gr 2--Although he enjoys his solitary life nestled snugly in a huge maple tree, Elmore, a porcupine, is lonely and tries to make friends despite his quills that keep others from approaching him. He nails a "Friends Wanted" sign to his tree, but the forest creatures consider him "too prickly" to be around. Disheartened, Elmore begins to regret his beautiful quills until he hits upon the idea of tying them into bundles and offering them as free quill pens. Neighboring animals scoop them up like "hot cakes," and when Elmore suggests they make ink from berries, they begin writing him friendly notes and even tack a message of their own on his tree. Readers' first encounter with Elmore is on the endpapers, a lovely spread executed in watercolor in which the adorable rodent is asleep in the limbs of a birch tree, feet up, paws stretched across his ample belly. More woodland scenes, framed in white, follow, depicting a collection of forest creatures at once curious about Elmore yet repelled by his shooting quills. Whether plopped in a meadow happily munching flowers or scratching his prickly head trying to figure out how to make friends, Elmore will win readers' hearts. VERDICT Pair this title with Paul Schmid's Perfectly Percy for a storytime about problem-solving or with Kate DiCamillo's La La La for a discussion of ways to make a friend.--Marianne Saccardi, Children's Literature Consultant, Cambridge, MA