The New Friend
Toot and Puddle  
By Holly Hobbie

   A Perfect Lesson for Little Ones, Minus the Preaching

    Don’t you just hate it when one person gets all the attention? When that same person seems to do everything flawlessly? When that same person is the prettiest of all?

    We as adults know that we must hang in long enough to learn that person’s foibles so we can appreciate their humanity. That’s a difficult concept to get across to children, but here it is. Told in a new book, The New Friend—another in her series featuring Toot and Puddle—Holly Hobbie manages to get her point across without preaching.

     Opal’s friend Daphne presents a new dilemma to her piggy pals and Hobbie offers up a wonderful new word... We have here a “Prima donna.” We relish in poor Daphne’s gentle comeuppance, and then come to have compassion for her weaknesses. Every child knows a “Daphne.” Every child occasionally feels left out, competitive, or just overwhelmed by a flamboyant personality. Every little girl will recognize her own feelings in this gentle little story about a someone who is not only a prima donna, but also is—well, very special, and not any more “perfect” after all than Opal or her other piggy friends.

     Holly Hobbie has been around for some three decades. The New Friend has made me into a fan!