A Whale of a Mistake

When a young girl makes a mistake, she struggles to cope with the associated feelings of guilt, shame, or embarrassment that ensue. At first small but still uncomfortable, the feelings grow to gargantuan, literally all consuming proportions as they are embodied by a whale that swallows the girl whole. With time, the child discovers the mistake leads to new perspectives and even beautiful realizations—chief of which is that the universe is full of mistakes. With new understanding and perspective, the girl’s mistake starts to feel less big until it eventually returns her to shore and fades away into the waves of the sea. A lot of the meaning and symbolism go unspoken in Hobai’s tale, so it’s not particularly self-explanatory, but it is an especially good book to read as a discussion starter with a child who is struggling with guilt or worry from a mistake. The tale clearly conveys that everyone makes mistakes and that mistakes don’t have to be destructive and can even lead to good outcomes and additional growth and understanding. The illustrations skew toward blue hues, which are fitting of the subject matter but predictable. As watercolors and ink, they have a flexibility and abstraction that helps share the message of the story, depicting tumultuous feelings that grow from a small circle to an enormous whale.