Wheedle on the Needle

by Stephen Cosgrove

illustrated by Robin James

-A Serendipity Book-

(Los Angeles: Price Stern Sloan, 1974)

Library Binding, 32 Pages, Children’s

ISBN: 9780843105643, US$2.95

ABCD Rating: ACQUIRE

Dedicated to Seattle, Washington, a wonderfully warm place for a Wheedle to stay.

From the Cover: Wheedle is a very grumpy Sasquatch, and with Seattle’s growth, finding a quiet place to sleep is close to impossible. When he heads for the top of the Space Needle and unleashes a never-ending rainfall, everyone stays indoors, and the city is quiet once again. Now, it's the Seattleites who are grumpy—who wants to stay inside all the time? Is there a solution that makes everyone happy?

My Review: I was born and raised in California. A year after my wife and I were married we moved to Seattle, Washington. After four years in Seattle, we moved to Utah to help family and so I could return to school. Now, in 2009 after finally completing my Bachelors degree, we have returned to the Pacific Northwest so that I could go to grad school in the English Masters program at Western Washington University. All of this is to say that even growing up in California I have always been in love with Seattle and Washington and everything that the city and state embodied. Even though both my wife and I are native Californians, we consider ourselves honorary Washingtonians and associate more with the Pacific Northwest as a home than we do with either California or Utah.

This is the long way around the barn to explain why, at the age of 33 and in 2009 I am just now hearing about Wheedle on the Needle. 2009 represents the 35th anniversary of this book and—more importantly—a return to the original message and Seattle-centric plot of the book. Apparently, back in 2002, when Wheedle was rereleased that eliminated the environmental message and made the Wheedle not native to the Puget Sound region. I can’t imagine how this might have looked, since it seems to me that the Seattle-ness is absolutely essential to the story. After all, the Wheedle became a Seattle icon and institution and was even the mascot for the Seattle Sonics basketball team from 1978-1985.

Anyway, after a 15 year long legal battle with the publishers, author Stephen Cosgrove has finally regained the rights to the book and it has been restored to its original Puget Sound local and there was a big to-do on Evening Magazine about a month ago celebrating the 35th anniversary of the book and its restoration, and believe it or not I have been in the hold line for this book at my local library for all that time.

As with There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Trout, Wheedle on the Needle has become a bedtime staple for my children. My son (age 4) especially loves the book, and now anytime he sees the Space Needle he says “Hey! Daddy! That’s where the Wheedle lives!” He’s very excited that we live close to Seattle and keeps asking me if we can go to Seattle to go to the Needle to see the Wheedle.

I cannot recommend this book enough for those of you with small children. It is especially good for those of you with kids that are beginning to learn to read as the words are nice and simple, and easy for children to pick up on. While I’m not a literal native Washingtonian and only a transplanted Pacific Northwesterner, my heart belongs to The Evergreen State and Wheedle on the Needle is now a big part of my love of this region.