Tidy

This book started very well, with a badger cleaning the forest and teaching the reader about ecology and how to maintain your environment clean. Then it went wild and lost any logic. How come an animal would destroy his own home, close access to his shelter and unroot thousands of trees because they look weird without leaves? What about the scary consequences to his environment and his friends?

At the end, things get better and he is able to fix his mistakes thanks to his friends. The book seems to teach that we can fix our mistakes, but this one was such an unlikely one from an animal that it was hard to follow through.

The title of the book made me expect a constructive lesson about cleaning after yourself and not tossing trash in the forest. What if instead of destroying the forest, the badger would have realized that leaves can be fun to play with his friends? What if he would have explained how to recycle? What if he would have inspired others to clean like him? There could have been so many other ways to teach about being tidy.

I am disappointed because this kind of book is important and I feel like the book lost its message on the way.

Emily Gravett does the best illustrations. Pete the badger is a serious tidier and none of the other forest animals managed to stop him from leveraging his tidiness into paving over the entire forest. They did all start eyeing him warily when he started collecting all the leaves, and looked real concerned when he started uprooting all the trees, and by the time the concrete arrived I guess they felt there was nothing they could do because they'd been silent the whole time. They were all happy to help Pete put the forest back to normal after he realized he'd made a mistake, but no one spoke out against his actions while multiple mistakes were being made. They all knew there was a problem, but they said nothing! How does Pete have so much power? Does he have a brute squad somewhere that keeps these animals living in fear? Even at the beginning the birds seemed quite happy to have their beaks brushed by Pete, but the fox always looked nervous. Was Pete democratically elected the leader of the forest and now the people aren't sure how to deal with the consequences of the Make The Forest Great Again campaign? Or are they all deferring to him because he has a mental illness and they're scared to scold him? Is Pete Charlie X?? Are the animals all afraid that if they make him angry he'll disappear them with his mind? Did all the animals just move on to another forest while theirs was paved, or were they also huddled in abandoned construction equipment, waiting for Pete to come to his senses? What if he never did? Would the animals have just died on the concrete, thinking about how there was nothing they could do? OR MAYBE Pete is the only animal who has gained some kind of sentience and the other animals just go along with him because they aren't capable of making conscious choices. Maybe they're just looking worriedly at everything Pete's doing because they can sense something is wrong, this is not how the forest is supposed to be, but they can't break out of their compulsion to follow the leader.