A review by kittykult
Sloppy Wants a Hug, Volume 1 by Sean Julian

3.0

Sloppy wants a hug, but Dewdrop refuses to give him one. Sloppy's feelings are very hurt. He does everything he can to win Dewdrop over. Why doesn't Dewdrop want to give Sloppy a hug? This is another cute and fun book about Sloppy the tree dragon. I would have liked it more if Dewdrop had recognized that Sloppy was sad and explained why she did not want to hug him, because although we want to reinforce consent and bodily autonomy, we also want to reinforce kindness toward our friends. I can understand why Dewdrop would not want to hug Sloppy due to the ending I won't spoil, but poor Sloppy had to watch her hug all the other animals and was made to feel like he had to earn affection from his friend rather than just deserving it because she cared about him. I think if you're going to read this book with your child, please have a conversation about what could have been done differently by the characters to avoid Sloppy feeling hurt by his friend.

Note: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley. I was not compensated in any other fashion for the review and the opinions reflected below are entirely my own. Special thanks to the publisher and author for providing the copy.