Publisher Description
**Read by country music superstar Trace Adkins!**
**The New York Times bestseller and official 2013 Jumpstart Read for the Record selection!**
New York Times bestselling author/artist Loren Long creates an unforgettable children's classic.
Otis is a special tractor. He loves his farmer and he loves to work. And he loves the little calf in the next stall, whom he purrs to sleep with his soft motor. In fact, the two become great friends: they play in the fields, leap hay bales, and play ring-around-the-rosy by Mud Pond.
But when Otis is replaced with the big yellow tractor, he is cast away behind the barn, unused, unnoticed . . . until the little calf gets stuck in Mud Pond. Then there is only one tractor—and it’s not big or yellow—who can come to the rescue. It is little old Otis who saves his friend. It is Otis who saves the day.
In a wonderful new palette, and in the tradition of classics like Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and The Story of Ferdinand, Loren Long has crafted an unforgettable new story—and character—celebrating the power of friendship and perseverance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Readers of classic children's books will find traces of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Little Toot and The Story of Ferdinand in this story of "a friendly little tractor." Otis the tractor loves to work as much as he loves to play. When he snores in the barn, his "soft putt puff puttedy chuff" consoles a motherless calf. Otis and the calf become pals, and Long (who reillustrated The Little Engine That Could) pictures them sitting under a tree in Ferdinand the bull's iconic pose. Yet this idyll cannot last. Otis's owner (no loyal Mike Mulligan) purchases a huge "brand-new yellow tractor" and puts Otis out to pasture, where "the weeds began to cover his tires." Only when the calf gets stuck in a muddy pond does Otis rev to the rescue. Long fashions Otis's headlamps as eyes and accents the charcoal gray and fawn brown gouache with apple red, buttery yellow and denim blue. Resurrecting stories of sweet machines aiding helpless animals is not easy in an era concerned with fossil fuels and feedlots, but Long's story should inspire readers to revisit old favorites. Ages 3 5.
