Odder, by Katherine Applegate

Odder, by Katherine Applegate (September 2022), is an utterly delightful novel in verse.  Otters are inherently delightful, of course, and all their furry faced charm comes through beautifully in this story of Odder, an otter lost as pup in the ocean alone, rescued by humans, and then released back into the ocean.  Odder is a particularly impulsive, curious otter by nature, and so she isn't as wary as she should be.  When a shark attack sends her back to the sanctuary where she was raised, and her days in the wild are numbered, she finds a new purpose in life tending to another orphaned pup.

I approach animal books with caution; too much anthropomorphism makes me squirmish (I didn't really care for The One and Only Ivan, for instance).  I didn't have that problem with Odder, though--I thought Applegate did a really good job making her titular otter a being to care about without straining credulity.  It doesn't feel at all like fantasy, which so many books from an animal stand-point do.  The choice to tell Odder's story in verse in the 3rd person worked really really well for otter-ish mindset too--it's a coherent story of vignettes, impressions, sensory detail, and emotions, such as how an otter might experience the world.

It is a very sweet story, spinning some gentle instruction about otters and their importance as a keystone species into the moving story of this one particular otter.   None of the individual otters we meet die, for those who worry about these things, although there is one stillborn pup.

Very highly recommend for otter fans in particular of course (so easy to imagine this paired as a gift with a stuffed otter) but also for anyone who wants to swim with a playful, funny, otter who will steal the hearts of all readers.  

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.