(+++) BOUNCING ABOUT

I Got This! By Julia Cook and Michele Borba, Ed.D. Illustrated by Dale Crawford. National Center for Youth Issues. $15.95.

     A teaching tool that is a touch too pedantic, despite being cast as an entertaining and charming story, I Got This! is supposed to be all about resilience and persistence – taking children through six “superpowers” to use when “life is full of challenges” that they need to overcome. So far, so good.

     As the framing story for the lessons, Julia Cook and Michele Borba create a Rescue Dog challenge requiring would-be Rescue Dog Charlie, accompanied by friendly squirrel Hazel and drawn with utter adorableness by Dale Crawford, to pull a sled to the top of a mountain. As a guide to the inevitable problems that Charlie and Hazel will encounter and need to overcome, a helpful eagle accompanies the pair, talks them through difficulties, and provides eagle feathers labeled with words describing each of the six “superpowers,” or rather “Bounce Back Superpowers,” as the authors style them. So far, so good – again.

     It is not in the elements but in their assemblage that matters become a bit overly earnest and the story creaks beneath the weight of the heavy importance the authors attach to every page. The teacher eagle – who, oddly, is never named – does not even offer Charlie the encouragement the pup asks for as he begins his climb, saying, “What I think isn’t important, Charlie. It’s what you believe about yourself that matters.” But how would it hurt or make Charlie less resilient for the eagle to say something along the lines of, “I have faith in you”?

     The eagle does promise to teach Charlie the Bounce Back Superpowers, and obligingly brings out two feathers with the words “breathe” and “brainstorm” for the first one, needed when Charlie and Hazel cannot get the sled between two trees. The lesson here is to breathe in a specific way “to clear your head,” give yourself positive reinforcement, then “flood your brain with lots of ideas.” Then, as the climb continues and the slope gets steeper, Charlie fears that “we can’t do this,” and the eagle obligingly takes away the “t” in “can’t” (the word is shown in huge letters in the snow) and tells Charlie to tell himself, “I GOT THIS!”

     And so the trek upward continues – with, again, some odd behavior by the eagle. A fallen tree completely blocks the path at one point, and the eagle says, “Don’t be afraid to ask for help,” but does not actually offer any help until Charlie specifically requests that the eagle do a flyover to find a way around the obstacle. How would it hurt if the eagle offered assistance, thus showing Charlie that people will help when you need it? The eagle even says, when the pup makes his request, “Sure, Charlie. I thought you’d never ask.” So the lesson is that help is available, but people who can assist you won’t do so unless you specifically request it? Perhaps that is not the intended lesson, but that is how it comes across here.

     Eventually, the exhausted dog and squirrel are ready to give up from sheer tiredness, so the eagle offers a “recharge” feather and the two take a nap – after which they finish their climb. So of course everything ends well, and Charlie even completes his first Rescue Dog mission on the way down the mountain, helping a baby bird back into the nest out of which it has fallen. A final page, for teachers and/or parents, condenses all the book’s lessons into an adult-focused narrative, explaining how to implement the authors’ recommendations in the real world. The entire book is very well-meaning and very clearly focused on teaching life skills, despite being couched in the form of a cute-animal adventure. Some of the emphasis does misfire a bit, though, as Cook and Borba double down on their insistence that children figure things out on their own, ask for assistance without expecting anyone to offer it unasked, and engage in specific activities in specific ways – such as a designated form of breath control and a nap. The underlying lessons taught here are valuable ones, but the teaching method is a bit too insistent – at times almost verging on hectoring – to encourage ready adoption of the techniques.