One of my favorite commercials is the one that features the line, "I'd
like to buy the world a Coke." I've always found that a very friendly
idea, just walking along down the street, handing Coca-Colas to everyone
you meet. Of course, the cost and the issue of transporting all of
those cans or bottles of pop would be prohibitive, but it's a nice
notion, anyway. I found myself thinking of this ad when I read Patrick McDonnell's Hug Time, which features characters from his comic strip Mutts.
Jules, more commonly known in the strip as Shtinky Puddin', is an
orange kitten with brown stripes and a white belly. He's small, but he
has a mission: "to give the whole world a hug." His owner doesn't object
to this idea but simply equips the cat with a sweater and sends him on
his way. He starts with his friends, Mooch, Earl and Noodles, but it
isn't long before he has branched out, hugging wild animals in town and
eventually on other continents.
Hug Time, like the
aforementioned jingle, is a little over-the-top. The journey upon which
Jules embarks is an enormous one. Presumably the fact that he is a cat
means he can simply stow away on the boat he uses to get from continent
to continent on his tour of the globe, but how is he to find food when
he is much too gentle to consider ever eating anything that could be a
friend? Additionally, it seems a stretch that every predator Jules meets
is willing to overlook his meal potential in favor of gratefully
accepting the friendly gesture. And in terms of real-world applications,
most parents probably would prefer that their children didn't hug every
random person and animal they met.
But Hug Time is a
fable, so it needn't be taken quite so literally. For instance, a smile
will work just as well as a hug, and one needn't travel the world to
distribute them. Just making an effort to be a little friendlier as a
general rule is a good way to put the book's message into practice.
After all, McDonnell says, "Start with the one who's closest to you." He
encourages kindness as well as environmental awareness, printing his
book on recycled paper and including descriptions of the Earth as "so
precious, so fragile, so round" and "so big and yet so small".
Like his other picture books, Hug Time
is fairly short on words, with no more than two sentences per page, but
in this case, the text is presented in rhyming couplets. The
illustrations are in full color, which helps to emphasize the diversity
of wildlife in the world. Because Jules is so small, some pages feel
like a Where's Waldo search, with the kitten hard to spot as he's locked
into a hug with a much larger animal. All told, Jules hugs
representatives of more than 300 species on his journey, including a
gray squirrel, a blue whale, an elephant, a chimpanzee, a giraffe, a
hippo, a tiger, a gnu, a panda, a peacock, a pudu, a wallaby, a wombat, a
humuhumu fish and a polar bear. At one point, he even hugs a baobab,
making him a true tree-hugger. McDonnell makes a special point of noting
how endangered tigers are, and the implication is there with the polar
bear as well.
Animal lovers should appreciate this book, and
Jules' determination to hug as many creatures as he possibly can is a
great way to get children thinking about stewardship of the planet. I
still think that giving the world a Coke sounds like a pretty nifty
idea. But a hug may be even better.
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