Smriti Prasadam and Sheryl Bone

This is cute, and there are some nice subtle (by kids' book standards) touches like where the verse is about the hedgehog and his "friends" having a "race" but you look and the friends are like a slug and a snail and a caterpillar running away from the hedgehog who is gonna eat them and looking very funny in their distress, and there is at least one verse that disturbs me and sticks around, about when the hedgehog is scared or you make him feel small, and he sticks out his spines and rolls up into a ball, because my kid's mum styles the hedgehog her "spirit animal" (if you know another term for this PM me because I am sympathetic to the argument that says it's cultural appropriation to use spirit animal but the alternatives that I have seen proposed, all tweely taken from older children's literature like "patronus" and "daemon," are obviously unacceptable and I'm not gonna stop telling people about the otter and me and our special relationship) and sure enough, that verse does capture the fundamental tension of our relationship, at least according to me (she'd probably tell you it's more that I am such a fucking child sometimes, but like, no? otter????).… (más)