A Tale for Reluctant Readers

Title: Tully Gets Hooked on Books

By Goldie Golding

Feldheim

40 pages

Tully Gets Hooked on Books is a delightful new picture book for frum families. Written and illustrated by Goldie Golding, the story follows Tully the worm as he travels through the forest and encounters several animal friends: Ollie Owl, Shimmy Sloth, Faigy Flamingo, and Talia Turtle.

Remarkably, each of these new friends is reading a book when Tully meets them, which in turn inspires him to want to learn to read, too. He tries to imitate each of them, in the hope that this will help him acquire the new skill. Tully puts on the owl’s eyeglasses, hangs upside down like the sloth, and balances like a flamingo. Despite these strategies, when Tully opens a book, all he sees are “squiggles and mishkibbles.”

But Tully doesn’t give up or get dejected. Instead, repeats after each encounter, “I did my hishtadlus, I tried my very best, I have bitachon, Hashem will do the rest!” The story ends with Tully enjoying a book read aloud by Mommy Worm and finally, on the last page, the reader gets to see that yes, eventually, b’ezras Hashem, Tully does learn how to read for himself.

Making the main character a worm who strives to read – a true bookworm! – is a clever choice that families are sure to find amusing. And showing that reading is a challenge and doesn’t just happen automatically is something that young children will recognize and identify with. This is especially true since they will most likely be hearing this story read to them by a parent or other grown-up in their lives. The addition of values like bitachon and hishtadlus adds a layer to the story that frum families will find meaningful, too.

My one suggestion that might have made the story even stronger would be to have shown Tully struggling with reading just a little bit more. Learning to read is natural for some kids but can be genuinely difficult for others; perhaps that could have been highlighted.

The illustrations are brightly colored and cheerful, and the book itself is wonderfully substantial. The pages are glossy and hard to rip – ideal for a child’s library and perhaps for their brothers and sisters after them, too.

The backmatter includes a note to parents and a wonderful activity titled “TaliaTurtle’sFingerplay” which parents are sure to enjoy sharing with their kids at bedtime alongside the book.