When I think back to when I was a kid, the first things that come to mind aren’t birthday parties or playing on the playground. They are from corners. I can still see the familiar spots in classrooms, libraries, and family gatherings where I would position myself just far enough away from the action to observe it without being pulled into its noise. Those corners were my comfort.
I was a child who preferred the gentle sound of turning pages to the rising laughter of a group. At home, I would spend hours reading beneath the window, tracing patterns in the frost or sunlight that spilled across the floor. The world felt large, sometimes too large, and my way of navigating it was to take it in quietly. Some people mistook this for shyness in the sense of weakness. I knew it was simply how I breathed in the details of life before I ever spoke them aloud.
The adults in my world were not unkind, but they encouraged me to speak up, to join in, to “come out of my shell” as they liked to say. I never knew how to tell them that I was not hiding inside a shell at all. I was living at my rhythm.
It is rare to see a book that treats this kind of quiet nature with respect and tenderness. That’s why Phyllis Carter’s Bashful the Shy Puppy hit me so hard. I saw the child I used to be in Bashful. He is the smaller of the puppies, the one who thinks twice before jumping, and the one who would rather listen than bark. The story doesn’t make fun of or ignore his quietness. It’s just who he is, until the world needs him to do something.
What I love most is that Bashful does not become someone else to be brave. When a snow-filled adventure turns dangerous, his courage is born not out of a sudden personality change but out of love for his family. That is a truth I learned slowly in my own life. Courage is not the opposite of fear. It is the willingness to carry fear with you into the moment that matters.
As a child, my moments of bravery rarely looked grand to anyone else. They were things like volunteering to read a paragraph aloud in class when I had been silent all week. They were telling a friend the truth even when I feared it might upset them. They were choosing to join a game on the playground when my instinct told me to stay in my familiar spot. Each of those moments felt monumental to me, even if they passed without much notice from others.
Reading Bashful’s story, I found myself thinking of how powerful it would have been to see bravery like mine reflected in a character when I was young. Most of the books I read as a child celebrated the loud and the bold. Their heroes shouted their triumphs and ran toward the spotlight. There is nothing wrong with those stories, but they did not show me that my way of being had its strength. Bashful does that. He shows children that there is a place for them in the center of the story, even if they arrive there softly.
The snowy landscape in Carter’s book feels like a metaphor for that kind of inner life. Snow muffles sound. It slows movement. It tells you to pay attention to the little things, like a pawprint, the way light bounces off ice, and the sound of your breath. I picture Bashful walking through that world like I did as a child, paying attention to every change and taking it all in before choosing what to do next.
As an adult, I deal with my quietness differently. I don’t think of it as something I need to get over anymore. I value this part of me. It allows me to listen deeply, to notice what others overlook, to speak with intention. When I meet children who linger on the edges of a group, I do not push them forward before they are ready. Instead, I sit beside them in the corner for a while.
What would happen if more kids read books like Bashful the Shy Puppy? I think about how comforting it would be for them to know that their way of being is not worse, just different. That their time to act will come. That being brave doesn’t have to be loud.
I still keep my copy of Bashful on my shelf, not because I need the lesson anymore, but because it feels like a promise. A promise that the quiet child I once was—and the quiet children I meet today—belong in the stories we tell. And sometimes, belonging is the first step toward courage.
