**An ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

Full review to come closer to publication.

Very cute story, and a bit longer than your average picture book. And the ART is amazing. Definitely picking this up once published for myself the nephew.

This is so adorable!! I squealed in delight when I saw it in the bookstore, hastily grabbed it on the shelf, and gleefully marveled at every hedgehog-filled page.

Hattie and Horace are the best of hedgehog friends, and do everything together, but they desperately wish to hug each other. Their poky quills make hugs troublesome and really just plain impossible. They try covering their quills with anything they find, from strawberries and snow*, to leaves and hollow logs, but darn it all, nothing works. One day, Horace finds a sock and wiggles into it. He looks about as silly and adorable as a hedgehog in a sock would

but Hattie doesn't mind. Hattie sees the potential. Hugging potential. (She also probably see the potential for becoming rich by selling socks to other hedgehogs to fulfill their hugging needs, but that's neither here nor there.) Hattie knows she's got to find herself a sock. And when she does, the most wonderful thing occurs; a thing that gives birth to fairies and makes old grumpy miser men smile in delight...a hedgehug.

This book also perfectly explains why socks are constantly missing their matching pair. The age-old mystery solved!

*Hedgehogs hate the cold and hibernate in the winter. They also pretty much lose the will to live in temperatures below 60F if they don't get to hibernate so...(yes, I realize I'm nitpicking a children's book with sentient hedgehogs besties, but I can't help it. )

**An ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

A nice little picture book, with charming and detailed illustrations, in which a carrot-hoarding rabbit learns that hoarding has poor results, and also that sharing is caring. The story isn't anything new, but it is presented in a cute way.

I keep hearing this book thrown around, uttered in the same breath as "feminist". This doesn't make any sense to me. This is just a sci-fi retelling of Cinderella in which the only difference is that Cinderella says she's too young for marriage, but will be his chief mechanic.

To me, that was her saying, we'll still be friends and when I get older, our relationship might lead beyond friendship, but I'm not ready for it right now. How exactly is that specifically "feminist"? That's just normal behavior, especially considering that she's really too young to get married. There's no agenda behind it, to me anyways.

Anyways, super cute and the illustrations look like Disney concept art, which should come as no surprise, since the illustrator has worked for Disney, Pixar, and assorted other animation companies.

The story is very close to the original Brothers Grimm fairytale minus the out-of-wedlock pregnancy and twins so it was pretty much your average Rapunzel story.

The illustrations were beautiful, especially the silhouette style of art. Gibb doesn't draw faces terribly well, but she does okay. And there was one panel that the people were supposed to be horrified, but they mostly just looked like they were pulling out some wicked dance moves. (Jazz hands, yeah!)