Our Friend Hedgehog series by Lauren Castillo

“I have never, ever been without Mutty, and he has never been without me,” Hedgehog explained. “We need each other.” Mole was a very good listener. She nodded in all the right places and rested a comforting paw on Hedgehog’s quills. It felt good to have someone to talk to in this big, scary forest.

The cover will help you anticipate some of this plot. You can see a woodland setting, a toy dog wearing a jumper (sweater), a girl with a camera, an owl, beaver, mole and some chickens. With only ten short chapters and 128 pages this is a perfect book for a newly independent reader. And as a bonus it begins with a map! I also loved the way each character has a distinct voice and personality and Lauren Castillo has included some little jokes along the way. 

Here is an example: “Peep!” Chick Two bounced off Chick One. “Peep, peep!” Chick One bounced off Chick Two. And the two leap-chicked right back into the brush. “For peep’s sake!” groaned Beaver.

Opening sentence - Notice the way the narrator speaks directly to the reader:

Sometimes you make a friend and it feels like you have known that friend your entire life. Hedgehog, Mutty, Mole, Owl, Beaver, Hen and Chicks, and me, Annika Mae. You might think it has always been this way, but it has not. There was a series of events that brought us all together. This is our friendship story. This is the story of us.

Blurb from author page: Hedgehog lives on a teeny-tiny island with only her stuffed dog, Mutty, for company. When a great storm carries Mutty away, she embarks on a quest to find her friend. Following the trail of clues Mutty left behind, brave Hedgehog meets a wiggly Mole, a wordy Owl, a curmudgeonly Beaver, a scatterbrained Hen and Chicks, and a girl who's new to the neighborhood, Annika May. With bravery and teamwork, there's nothing that can stop these seven from finding Mutty, but along the way they discover something even more important: each other.

You will need to talk to your young reading companion about instamatic or Polaroid cameras!

Awards:

• Junior Library Guild Selection
• Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of the Year SELECTION 2021
• Chicago Public Library Best Books SELECTION 2020
• Kirkus Reviews Best Children’s Books SELECTION 2020
• School Library Journal Best Book of the Year SELECTION 2020
• ALSC Notable Children’s Books LONGLIST 2021

I saw the third book from this series mentioned on social media and I was curious BUT here in Australia these books are way outside the budget of a school library at over AUS$45 each. That's why I purchased the ebook version of Book One. I really enjoyed my dip into this series SO if these ever arrive here in paperback for a better price you might consider adding them to your school library - I am always on the hunt for simple early chapter books with colour illustrations and most importantly appealing stories.

Bookseller blurb: Autumn leaves are falling in Hedge Hollow, and the change in season brings with it a spiny surprise... another hedgehog! Is it friend or foe? Or is it . . . family? On the one paw, Hedgehog is excited to meet one of her own kind, but on the other paw, she has never felt so different—or distant—from her old friends. Where does Hedgehog belong, and who does she belong with? A journey upriver through an unfamiliar forest just might lead her home…

Bookseller blurb: When the humans of Hedge Hollow head off to school, Hedgehog and her furry, feathery friends decide to start a school of their very own! Owl will teach reading. Beaver will teach shop. Mole will teach geography. Hen will teach math. And Hedgehog . . . Hedgehog isn't so sure. After all, you have to be an expert to teach a class, don't you? Hedgehog doesn't feel like an expert in anything. Lucky for Hedgehog her friends are happy to lend a paw, sharing laughter and kind words as they figure out a solution.

Lauren Castillo studied illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art and received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She is the author and illustrator of the 2015 Caldecott Honor winning book, Nana in the City, and new chapter book series, Our Friend Hedgehog. Lauren has also illustrated several critically acclaimed picture books, including Kirkus Prize finalist Imagine by Juan Felipe Herrera, Twenty Yawns by Jane Smiley, and Yard Sale by Eve Bunting. She currently draws and dreams in Harrisburg, PA.

Too many Carrots by Katy Hudson

Rabbit loves carrots. He loves them so much that his whole burrow is full of carrots, and there's no room for him to sleep there anymore. What will he do? Rabbit has lots of friends, and they keep offering him a place to stay - but every time, Rabbit brings his carrots with him. Now there's no room at anyone's house! Finally, Rabbit finds the solution and realises that sharing with friends is more important than hoarding things. Book Trust

Two of my favourite things to do are 1. Visit a Lifeline Bookfair and 2. Visit with my friend from Kinderbookswitheverything.  She spied this book and knew I was making a collection of picture books for a country Preschool.

I hope the preschool staff linger over the title page double spread - it is filled with fun - Keep Calm and Carrot On; To do eat carrots, plant carrots, collect carrots, eat carrots; and on the bookshelf Carrot Poetry, Carrot Desserts, Carrot Diaries and 'An ode to the Carrot'. And on a different shelf I spied the classic story 'War and Carrot'. 

The story here is a familiar one. Rabbit's house is too crowded - it is filled with carrots. His friends offer to share their homes but each one of these ends in disaster. Rabbit needs to 'learn a lesson' about sharing and friendship. There would be plenty to talk about at the end of this book and then everyone could munch on a carrot!

My Name is Hamburger by Jacqueline Jules

My Name is Hamburger is a verse novel. Jacqueline Jules packs a lot into this short book - Jewish culture, discrimination, hopes and wishes, friendship complications, bullies, belonging, making new friends, Holocaust survivors, school life and family life.

The year is 1962 and Trudie's parents are holocaust survivors and Jewish. Her father owns a printing business and her mother stays home to look after her new prematurely born baby brother. 

I like how my family sit at our round table

just eating a tasty food, not a last name

I wish didn't go with my first.

Trudie has a very special friend who lives nearby named Lila. They have been friends since they were babies. Trudie excels at spelling and so as this story opens she is competing in her school level competition. Trudie is in grade four. She and her dad have been studying hard for this. She spells homogenous and makes it to the final round of two contestants but then the judge gives her a word with a silent letter - rhythm.

Like a gherkin.

That little green pickle

Kids like to crunch

This gives rise to more dreadful teasing by one horrid boy in her class - Daniel Reynolds. Trudie is so disappointed about the spelling bee but there is the hope she can compete again next year - she did make it through five rounds. I loved the way her teacher celebrates her achievement. 

School should be a happy place for Trudie but every week there is the problem of the music class. Trudi cannot sing the Christian songs and so she spends her time in the library. She loves being with the librarian Mrs Nolan, doing tasks like shelving books from A to Z. It is lucky because Trudi loves to read and she is getting close to the target on fifty books on the class reading chart. She didn't win the spelling bee perhaps she can win the reading trophy. Then a new boy arrives. He is also subjected to racial taunts because he is thought to be 'Chinese'. In fact he was born in the US.

Meanwhile Lila seems to have found a new friend. A pretty and popular girl named Sue Ellen. Young modern readers might be shocked when they read that Trudie cannot be invited to Sue Ellen's birthday party because as a Jewish child and so she is not allowed into the Colburn Country Club. The new boy, Jerry Braswell, who lives next door also used to be her friend but then he joined up with Daniel Reynolds. They taunt the girls and one day they throw water bombs at them on their way home:

Only red balloons, scattered

in little pieces all over the street

along with my trust

in mothers who understand

Trudie loves doing things with her father. Her mother is always distracted by the baby. They decide to plant a cherry tree in their garden but then Trudie comes home one day and the little plant has been destroyed. Not long after this her father has a dreadful accident and he can no longer work.

Her father does not tell Trudie much about the holocaust but he does offer some wisdom:

"He says 'hate' starts with separation and grows bigger, until it turns to stones angry people throw through windows. ... Daddy doesn't like the way I say that word 'different'. Doesn't like when it pulls people apart, puts some on a pedestal and others in the dirt."

"In my life ... I've seen people turn their backs when others suffer. But today ... true neighbours show me the best of what people can be."

I read My Name is Hamburger on a Kindle but this 2022 book is still available in paperback. Here is an interview with Jacqueline Jules. And here is a review from the Jewish Book Council.

Bookseller blurb: Trudie Hamburger is the only Jewish kid living in the small southern town of Colburn in 1962. Nobody else at her school has a father who speaks with a German accent or a last name that means chopped meat. Trudie doesn't want to be the girl who cries when Daniel Reynolds teases her. Or the girl who hides in the library to avoid singing Christian songs in music class. She doesn't want to be different. But over the course of a few pivotal months, as Trudie confronts her fears and embraces what she loves--including things that make her different from her classmates--she finally finds a way to say her name with pride.

A House in the Woods by Inga Moore

Two little pigs build their houses in the woods. Sadly, after a day of exploring, they return to find Bear has moved into one house and it is wrecked and Moose has moved into the other house and that one is wrecked too. This all means the two pigs and Bear and Moose have nowhere to live. Then Moose suggests they could work together and build one big and perfect house for all of them. Well yes they could attempt this project but really they need some experts 

"so Moose called the Beavers on the telephone ... "

The Beavers are happy to help but in exchange they want peanut butter sandwiches. This is agreed and so the construction begins. 

"and by tea time the roof was on. (The lunch and tea times were on different days of course. Beavers are fast, but not that fast.)"

The sweet happy ending and those six plates of peanut butter sandwiches make this a perfect book to read aloud to your preschool or Kindergarten group.

Betsy Bird says: Now I have read A House in the Woods by Inga Moore and I can already tell you that twenty or thirty or forty years from now a man or woman will be asked what their favorite picture book was as a child and they will describe the images here. Maybe they won’t remember the exact title. Maybe they’ll blank on the author’s name. But what they won’t forget is the feeling of perfect contentment and peace brought about through Moore’s combination of image and text. This is the picture book equivalent of a warm, soothing bubble bath.

When you open this book make sure you take time to linger over the end papers. And if uou read the review by Betsy Bird you will be alerted to look for some other tiny details. 

A House in the Woods is an old book and of course it is sadly now out of print but you might be lucky and find a copy in a library. A House in the Woods is a NSW Premier's Reading Challenge book K-2 [24439].

Companion books:

Waiting for Winter

A House for Wombats

Decades ago I saw my first book illustrated by Inga Moore and I fell in love with her art style.

The Vegetable Thieves

In my former libraries I had copies of Aktil's Big Swim and Aktil's Bicycle Ride. Other books illustrated by Inga Moore are:

Six Dinner Sid

Here is a full list of books illustrated and written by Inga Moore:

• Aktil's Big Swim (Oxford University Press, 1980)
• Aktil's Rescue (Oxford University Press, 1982)
• The Vegetable Thieves (Andersen Press Ltd, 1983; Viking Press, 1984, ISBN 9780670743803)
• A Big Day for Little Jack (1984)
• The Truffle Hunter (Andersen Press Ltd, 1985)
• Fifty Red Night-caps (Walker, 1988, ISBN 9780744517835)
• Rose and the Nightingale (London: Andersen Press, 1988)
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Prentice Hall, 1989)
• Six-Dinner Sid (Simon & Schuster, 1990, ISBN 9780750003049)
• Oh, Little Jack (1992)
• The Little Apple Tree (1994)
• Six Dinner Sid: A Highland Adventure (2010)
• A House in the Woods (Candlewick Press, 2011)
• Captain Cat (Walker Books, 2012, ISBN 9781406337303)
• Moose's Book Bus (Candlewick Press, 2021)

You might also look for her editions of Wind in the Willows; The Secret Garden; Anne of Green Gables and The Reluctant Dragon. For a short time Inga Moore lived in Australia but she now lives in the UK. 

The Secret of Glendunny Book One The Haunting by Kathryn Lasky

"With a friend you can become more. You can become braver, smarter ... just better."

Blurb: Deep in the wilds of Scotland, land of ancient warrior kings and myths, there is a deep secret. The secret is a colony of beavers, a species that is craved for their fur pelts, but vilified for what humans consider to be the destruction of their land. No beaver has been spotted in Scotland or England for over five hundred years, until the young beaver, Dunwattle, is sighted! Dunwattle’s flight is driven by the presence of a ghostly figure, a figure of a mysterious young girl who is almost one thousand years old. And now Dunwattle is destined to be destroyed for revealing the hidden colony, but his best friend Locksley is determined to save him. Will their ancient beaver colony survive?

Reading this book takes quite a lot of stamina. I loved the map on the first page and the end notes and chapter sample at the back of the book but I kept wishing there was a list of the characters because there are so many of them - three young beavers - Dunwattle, Locksley and Yrynn, a wise swan named Elsinore, an evil lynx named  Grynfill, several humans who want to find evidence that beavers are back in the UK, two ghost children - Lorna and Fergus, a mythical wolf pup - Stellamara, a brave Otter mother named Glory and her two young babies - Iggy and Edy, and several adult beavers who are teachers and council members, the leader of the beavers Castor Aquarius (Oscar of Was Meadow) and Snert of the Snout who plans to over throw the current leader. There are also references to Scottish history and Edward Longshanks; The stone of destiny now in Westminster Cathedral; Henry VIII; royal protection of swans; and modern-day drones. 

Swans and beavers do actually live in a symbiotic relationship. Like beavers, trumpeter swans eat a wide variety of aquatic plants, such as pondweed, wild rice, and algae; and they prefer shallow wetlands less than six feet deep. The tops of old beaver lodges also provide excellent nest sites for swans, who seek existing mounds surrounded by water and less than 600 feet from shore. 

"What of course the two-legs did not realise is that their precious land would be entirely worthless if the water table was not maintained. If water-storing wetlands disappeared, farmers would not be able to farm, and species of birds and insects would simply vanish as well. Water meant life. Water shaped continents, and the beavers were the builders of these continents through their meticulous maintenance of the water table and their creation of ponds like the one in Glendunny."

There is evil, betrayal, cruelty, loss, compassion, kindness, a touch of humor, and heart-stopping adventure. The swan Elsinore is intelligent, pragmatic, and a deeply moral force who keeps watch and intervenes when needed. The carefully constructed fantasy world holds perfectly true, always within the parameters set forth by the author. The invented language has a Scottish flavor, with subtle differences among the species. Further dimension is added by the detailed and beautifully expressed descriptions of place, action, and characters. Draws readers deeply into a mystical world and leaves them wishing for more. Kirkus Star review

I recommend this series for readers aged 10+ mainly because the humour is quite sophisticated and also because the action constantly switches between scenes and characters and so readers have to hold together several complex story strands. Younger readers might also struggle to understand the prejudice against Yrynn, whose ancestors have come to the UK from Canada is given the derisive name of Canuck. There is also a delicious political edge to Kathryn Lasky's writing. I remember these themes were explored in her Guardians of Ga-Hoole which I read many years ago. 

Luckily enough is resolved at the end of the first book so readers are not left hanging but there are also enough incomplete threads to leave you keen to read the sequel.

Fans of Redwall, Podkin One-ear and Endling will enjoy this new series.

Poppy and Rye by Avi illustrated by Brian Floca

 

In my last post I talked about Poppy by Avi which is the first book in this series from 1995. Books from this series are all still in print but they may be a little difficult to source here in Australia sadly.

Poppy has discovered the truth about Mr Ocax and now, after a fierce battle, she has defeated him and he is dead. Poppy has a wonderful, if somewhat cantankerous, new friend - Ereth - a porcupine. Ragweed is now gone but Poppy feels it is important to find his family and tell them what happened.

She sets off on the long journey and some what reluctantly her friend Ereth agrees to accompany her. On the way Poppy meets a mysterious mouse who looks exactly like Ragweed. 

"Almost overwhelmed with emotion, Poppy closed her eyes, spun, dipped, and danced some more. Then she opened her eyes. Standing before her was a mouse. Poppy gasped. For one indescribable moment she thought it was Ragweed. The mouse before her had the same orange-coloured fur. His whiskers were fair. His tail was not very long. His ears were small and round. ... Now the strange mouse extended his paws. Without a word he gently took Poppy's paws in his. At his touch Poppy felt a tingle ripple through her body. It was as if a feather had stroked her from her tail to her nose."

This stranger mouse then disappears but when Poppy finds Ragweed's family she sees him standing at the back of their tunnel home. She discovers his name is Rye. Rye, however has his own problems. He is sad to hear Ragweed has been killed but at the same time he is relieved that he no longer has to live under the shadow of his parents number one son. Rye decides this is the moment he should prove himself. Some beavers have set up a dam and the mouse family have been forced to flee their home. Rye finds a way into the den of the beavers but he is captured and held prisoner. Brave Poppy risks her own life to save Rye. She has fallen in love with him ever since they danced in the forest.

There are some very dramatic scenes in this book and the boss of the beavers Caster P Canad - the dam builder - has such a distinct and quirky character. Here is a sample from one of his speeches:

"Great balls of fire ... they're going to topple that boulder. If it comes down it'll hit the dam. It's ufair. It's wrongheaded. It's a matter of life and death. .... For the honour of Canad's Cute Condos ... we've got to draw the line somewhere. Give me a dam or give me death! Go the whole hog! Go for broke! Fight tooth and tail! Charge!"

Here are some review comments for Poppy and Rye. 

Little Goose's Autumn by Elli Woollard illustrated by Briony May Smith

"And one apple-red, dappled-red, breeze-blown day, 

When the goose went down to the lakeside to play,

She felt in her heart a sharp tugging pain,

Like a strange kind of longing she couldn't explain."

A little goose feels a tug at her heart but what does it mean? She knows it is now autumn so she sets off to ask the other forest animals. The beavers are chopping wood, the squirrels are gathering acorns and the bears are preparing their den for their winter sleep.

It is Autumn here in Australia so this is the prefect book to share with your young reading companion. And yes it is fairly new (2020) so it is available. I am happy to report that the rhyme used in this book works really well (sadly this is not always the case). 

See inside this book here.

I have talked about other Animal Migration and Bird Migration books on this blog. The perfect companion read to go with Little Goose's Autumn would be Lucy Goosey by Margaret Wild illustrated by Ann James.

Here is the companion volume by Elli Woollard and Briony May Smith:

Little Beaver and the Echo by Amy MacDonald illustrated by Sarah Fox-Davies DVD read by Emilia Fox

"When you are sad, the Echo is sad,' said the wise old beaver. 'When you are happy, the Echo is happy too."

Little Beaver and the Echo has long been a favourite book. I have read it aloud to our youngest students for many years but I had no idea there was an edition that included a DVD. Walker Books do products like this so well. In our school library we have the DVD sets of We're going on a bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, Our House illustrated by Bob Graham and Owl Babies by Martin Waddell.

Little Beaver is lonely. He cries out down by the lake and immediately hears the cries of another sad soul across the water. He sets off to investigate picking up duck, otter and turtle on the way. He needs to talk to the wise old beaver about the other beaver on the far side of the lake. The old beaver tries to explain about echoes but Little Beaver is confused.

"But how can I find him and be his friend? ... He doesn't have any friends, and neither do I."

Wait a minute - you do have friends. Little Beaver. The Duck, the otter and the turtle all explain they are now his true friends.  Little Beaver is so happy and your young reading companion will be too! And if you can find this DVD edition you could follow your reading with a viewing of this beautifully presented and gentle little movie.

Another echo book that I would pair with this is Happy Birthday Moon by Frank Asch.