Hug Machine by Scott Campbell (review)

What, you may ask, precisely is a Hug Machine? It’s a little boy with a propensity for loving squeezes whose hugs are good enough to stop crying babies and make small turtles feel big inside. No one is too spiky or huge for a Hug from the Hug Machine, not even a porcupine or a whale. There’s a matter-of-fact glee in this picture book that keeps it silly and sweet but never saccharine (“People often ask what the Hug Machine eats to keep the hugging energy high. Well, the answer is pizza”), and the gentle but insistent repetition and theatrical beat give it a playful rhythm. Watercolor illustrations on textured paper feature our Peanuts-headed protagonist in suspenders and big red boots against a warm, earthy palette heightened by extensive use of pink, particularly for backgrounds. The cloudiness of the medium, the thick and bumpy outlining, and an exaggerated roundness of features ramp up the coziness, but the use of perspective and close-ups, as in a spread where the Hug Machine comes right for the audience, helps keep things from getting too treacly. Whether for bedtime or storytime, affectionate kids and adults will thoroughly embrace (ahem) this fuzzy and goofy paean to cuddling.