'LI'L PET HOSPITAL' New series of books teaches children how to nurture

The stories feature injured pets and how the animals deal with their situations.
By ERIN HANAFY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- Even the smallest children want to nurture and help others and can make sense of their world this way, the creator of a new series of books says.
Kenn Viselman, famous for marketing "Teletubbies" and "Thomas the Tank Engine" to TV audiences, came up with the idea for the "Li'l Pet Hospital" books in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Children ages 4 to 8 felt left out as adults organized fund-raisers, gave blood and reported for military duty and older children opened lemonade stands to raise money for victims of the attacks, Viselman says.
"The youngest children were sitting there with a sense of dread, I guess. They were seeing others in their lives able to help other people but they could do nothing. Then they have their parents telling them, 'The world's a dangerous place,'" Viselman says.
Throughout the series -- based on the toy line of the same name -- the pets suffer minor injuries, are shown dealing with them and invite the reader to help them through the healing process. Every story ends with the same line: "And now all they need is a li'l extra love from you!"
"If you can give a child something to nurture, the child feels a sense of empowerment. That thought had me create this whole concept of nurture play," Viselman says.
Books in the series
In "The Great Race" (HarperCollins), Loveblossom the pony and Splint the bunny get poison ivy while romping through Healy Fields. When Filo the lion comes to visit them in the hospital, they pass the time by daydreaming about an earlier race through the fields.
"The Peanut Garden" (HarperCollins) also shows a character who is hurt, gets medical help and remembers happy times to help him recuperate. Stomp the elephant goes to the hospital with thorns in his trunk and remembers the good times in his garden -- the planting, wilting and eventual regrowth of a rose plant -- as the doctor removes the roses' painful thorns.
Children can relate to these ailments, and the illustrations were designed to appeal to the youngest children, Viselman says.
"The eyes were created in a way to look both happy and sad at the same time," he says. "The child feels a sense of being able to help."
Like the "Teletubbies" characters on TV, the "Li'l Pet Hospital" animals are gender-neutral. Their various shapes and sizes -- and their ability to work together and help each other -- impart a lesson of acceptance, Viselman says. In an upcoming story, Stomp the elephant finds that his size prevents him from doing the things he wants to do.
"He wants to do things that the little pets do. We show by the end of the story that Stomp can't do that, but look at all the things he can do," Viselman says. "When we live in a world where war is the background, showing children the idea of acceptance and how to work together is something that's not getting enough attention."