Friday, March 15, 2019

Otto and Pio by Marianne Dubuc

Otto and Pio by Marianne Dubuc. PICTURE BOOK. Princeton, 2019. $18.  9781616897604

BUYING ADVISORY: EL(K-3) –OPTIONAL 

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

This is story of a school Otto who is very set in his ways. When an egg of sorts appears, he just ignores it. When a creature hatches from it, he decides he must find its mother. While Pio the squirrel looks for his mother, the creature named Otto gets bigger and bigger. Each day he makes Pio some soup to eat for when he gets home. Eventually Otto is too big for the squirrel house and Pio must make an important decision.

I see this type of story a lot in kids books, with the squirrel who is set in his ways as an old man character. I prefer this version by far –I always thought it was a bit unsafe to have children pursuing friendship with loner men. The illustrations are charming and its fun to watch Otto grow. It does seem overly long, both in number of pages and in plotline.  I found myself wishing something else would happen outside of the day to day ‘search’ and ‘soup’ routine.

Reviewer: Stephanie MLS & Author.

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