This is a lovely tale about Shelley, an oddly familiar looking friendly boy-turtle (Franklin anyone?). Shelley is an active turtle who likes to have fun and is much faster than all of the other turtles. Because of these qualities, everyone gets mad at him and he doesn't have any friends. One of Shelley's favorite activities is depicted to be throwing food fights and spin dancing. He is also very impulsive and accidentally breaks things. Shelley's innocent-looking turtle parents become distressed with their son's overwhelming sadness, lack of friends and chaotic behavior and take him to the very old and hardly suspicious looking Dr. Turtle who hoods Shelley up to some electrodes and monitors his brain activity.Dr. Turtle tells Shelley that everything is going to be okay.
Well, it sure turns out that way.
Shelley now must see a "therapist" every week and his mom shoves this giant white horse pill down his throat everyday to help him "calm down a little". Shelley then develops some flute playing and boating skills and makes friends with everyone and he had "lots and lots of friends".
As much as I truly see the honorable intentions of this book and I hope that it has served it's purpose a thousand times over. I just don't think something like this would fly nowadays. You can definitely tell this book is from 1989. It has a charm to it though and definitely was my big library find for the week.
Illustrated by Carol Schwartz.
Woodbine House, 1989
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