Hold the Hugs! Elmore by Holly Hobbie

FRIENDS WANTED

Despite his cozy home in a tall maple tree, Elmore Porcupine is lonely.

Solitude can be boring.

He posts a sign at the foot of the tree to advertise for someone to talk to and to play with. His old Uncle Porcupine tries to be supportive.

"I'm your friend," he says.

But Elmore has overheard the other young animals in the forest talking about how hard he is to get close to. As he rattles his quills, he realizes that perhaps the others have, um, a point.

Elmore spent a rainy day, holing up in his tree, thinking about what to do about his troublesome quills.

Clearly Elmore is stuck with his quills. His problem is that the others are stuck by them.

Perhaps he can find his way to making his quills an asset! He gathers up his some of the quills he's shedded, ties them up in an attractively yarn-tied bundles and creates a new sign:

QUILL PENS!
100% REAL PORCUPINE QUILLS
FREE!

In a version of the old saw, "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade," Elmore finds that offering free quills gets everyone happily writing notes and letters to each other, and Elmore's tree becomes the best place to be. Soon he finds a new sign taped to his tree.

YOU ARE A BEAUTIFUL PORCUPINE.
OUR WOODS ARE LUCKY TO HAVE YOU!

                                  --YOUR FRIENDS

Noted author-illustrator Holly Hobbie has a new and appealing prickly little character, in her Elmore (Random House, 2018), who manages to parlay his spiky, prickly quills into presents for his would-be friends, in a new version of making a silk purse out of a swine's ear. Elmore is a personable, proactive, and positive-thinking porcupine who finds popularity while remaining true to himself, and Hobbie's watercolor artwork is as charmingly engaging as in her best-selling series, Toot & Puddle (See reviews here).

Share this one with two other sweetly prickly tales, Paul Schmidt's Hugs from Pearl or the popular Aussie author-illustrator Aaron Blabey's I Need a Hug.