April’s Birthday Pick
April 14, 2013 § 1 Comment
Spring is a time of rebirth: a time of budding trees, sprouting seeds, and birthday parties. As for the last, you’re in luck, because there is a brand new Otis story on the shelves! Whether or not you’re familiar with Loren Long’s stunningly illustrated and action-packed picture books about Otis (see previous posts here), a happy-go-lucky tractor who always comes through for his friends, the new Otis and the Puppy (Ages 3-6) is a slam-dunk. Get your local bookstore to wrap up a copy for every one of your spring birthday parties; and don’t worry about whether the recipient has read the original Otis or Otis and the Tornado because, like its predecessors, Otis and the Puppy stands alone.
This new book has it all: heart, empathy, heroism, and a doe-eyed, playful-eared puppy. When the puppy arrives on the farm, he develops an immediate fondness for the tractor; he eagerly joins in Otis’ games of Hide and Seek and sleeps each night against the purring tractor. Otis quickly learns that the puppy and him have something in common: they’re both afraid of the dark. So when the puppy strays too far from the farm one afternoon and is not recovered by bedtime, Otis’ “heart ached deep inside his engine. He knew how scared of the dark his new friend was and…he knew his friend needed him.” But can Otis muster up the courage to leave the safety of the barn to search for his friend in the dark?
I’ve been thinking a lot about courage lately—about how often we call on our children to be brave (the daily list is long: walking up the steps into school; removing training wheels; staying in bed during a thunderstorm). If there’s something children can relate to, it’s the fear behind being brave (didn’t someone once define courage as the act of being afraid and doing it anyway?). The first time I read Otis and the Puppy aloud to my children, their awe was palpable: “Otis is so brave, Mommy,” whispered my son, as a quivering Otis enters the pitched black forest with only his headlights to guide him. “Mind over matter,” my mother used to preach to us when we were afraid; and Otis indeed uses his imagination to calm his nerves, counting “one-putt, two-puff, three puttedy,” as if in the middle of an ordinary game of Hide and Seek.
On a recent spring break trip to Florida, my son came up against his very great fear of swimming. For a week, my husband and I tried to coax him into the water above his waist. “My body is saying no, my body is afraid!” he shrieked. “Do you remember what Otis did when he was afraid in the forest?” I offered. “I don’t want to talk about Otis!” he shot back (I could almost hear him as an adult telling his shrink, “My Mom was always trying to compare my life to picture books.” Oops.) Yet, a few days later, when my husband was at last holding his hands and guiding him on his belly through the water, he looked at me, grinned, and exclaimed, “Mommy, I’m counting in my head, and it’s helping!” We’re still a long way off from putting our head in the water, but with literary heroes to inspire us, I know we’ll get there one day.
My children’s favorite moment in the book, when Otis finds the puppy (by his tail poking out of a hollow log), and the latter “squealed and cried and covered Otis’s face with kisses.”
What to Read to Your Kids 
Another one of your best! I love it!