Tales From The Trees                       A Monster Misunderstanding
Starring Happy the Hodag and Buddy the Bulldog

Jill Kuczmarski

Starting with Tales From The Trees, readers will catch a quick background of what a Hodag is and where they live.  There is even an explanation of why people have never actually seen Hodags.  To just give a clue, it has to do with the fact that they’re green.  The story is told in verse, so it’s easy to catch a child’s attention and keep it.  The length will also help in keeping a child hooked.

A Monster Misunderstanding goes into a much more substantial story that has the true message of looking past your perceptions of others, and realizing that you can still be friends.  When a tired white bulldog named Buddy wanders into the woods looking for some shade, he lies down for a nap.  When he awakens, he finds himself in a most dreaded place for a white bulldog, in the home of a Hodag named Happy.  Buddy has, of course, learned from the time he was a pup that these menacing creatures like to eat white bulldogs.  Buddy is frightened, until he learns that the Hodag was just trying to be helpful, and that he just wanted to be friends.  Buddy is able to overlook what he has learned and become friends with a creature he is supposed to fear, according to everything he has been taught.

Each page of the books is full of color, which helps to draw even more attention.  The characters are cute, and even the supposedly scary Hodag is shown as looking like a cute, yet strange creature that kids will find appealing rather than scary.

These books achieve what they were intended to do.  That is, they give a message that we should look past the outer appearance of others and look to what’s inside, as that’s what really matters.  The stories are told in a simple form that young children will surely understand.  The characters are cute and the illustrations lively and colorful.  Definitely good for very young children, as older kids might find them a little too childish.