Lost in a Good Book

‘I need a hug. Will you cuddle me, Lou?’ ‘What? With those spikes? Get away from me! Shoo!’ All this little porcupine wants is a hug. But with such prickly spikes, will she ever get the cuddle she craves?

I am fascinated how I can love some of Aaron Blabey’s work and dislike others. I am not a huge fan of Pig the Pug. At All. I don’t know what it is but that dog gets on my nerves. And yet, I love Blabey’s other works. This book in particular is amazing because it doesn’t go where you expect it to go.

With an echidna looking for a hug there’s laughs abound. Of course no one will hug him, they dismiss him, they are rude to him, they practically flee from him. You feel so bad for this echidna.

The rhyming verse makes this an easy page turner, but Blabey has a remarkable skill in saying a lot with only a few lines of verse. There is emotion and heart, a whole story is captured in a few words. It’s funny but filled with heart at the same time.

The illustrations and formatting doing great work conveying story and meaning as well. The characters move around the page to show action and the text shows emotion and tone through stylisation and size choices. That is a benefit of picture books, they are allowed to play with form so much more than many novels. Not that this has a lot of change to regular form, certainly I have seen more dramatic shifts, but I was reminded how clever it can be in telling a story. Especially one like this where heart and humour work together so well.

The ending is beautiful. I love how two ostracised people find comfort in one another. I liked that they had each other, and I also actually quite enjoyed how no one else learnt their lesson about being rude and mean spirited. It is always wonderful if you can show people changing their minds or being taught about their wrong behaviour/opinions, but sometimes you can’t convince people to like you, to be nice or compassionate, but you will find others like you who will support you. Which is a great lesson to show kids, especially one hidden in an otherwise humorous book.

You can purchase I Need A Hug via the following

 QBD | Booktopia | Blackwell’s

Dymocks |  Angus and Robinson

 Fishpond | Amazon | Amazon Aust