Picopaco: The Woodpecker Who Built a Town

Picopaco is a woodpecker who, instead of living in a simple hole inside a tree, has built herself a far more ambitious home, complete with beak-crafted furniture, toys and ornaments. But she has no friends, and as we read on, we recognize a theme emerging of shyness and loneliness. When Picopaco visits the woodpecker town, the noise makes her head spin, and she flies back home to avoid the chaos. And so things continue, until the day of the storm …

As Picopaco watches her neighbours as they are made homeless by the gales buffeting their nests, her heart is melted, despite her anxiety and the fact that ‘she wasn't very good with surprises.’ To her astonishment, she learns that her new guests are more than happy to help her arrange her home in exactly the way she likes, and in providing hospitality she benefits as well as they do. Picopaco finds delight in helping to redesign and rebuild the town, and she and her new friends discover they can all benefit from one another’s very different attributes and talents. Although I appreciated the helpful ideas behind the story, some illustrations could be confusing and I had to look quite hard to find Picopaco on many pages.

The theme of the ‘different’ child who finds social interaction challenging is one many children, and parents, may find hard to approach, but this story may make approaching the topic of neurodiversity easier.