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A robe-clad mouse rules by rigid rules until a forest mirror exposes his hollow image, planting the first seed of self-doubt and change.
Curious Jojo repeatedly asks “Why?” about the grand Plan, revealing its purposeless bustle and forcing the mouse to confront the emptiness beneath his authority.
Velasquez’s forest fable landed harder than I expected. The mouse starts as a showy manager, then stumbles through doubt, harm, and crisis until service finally makes sense. No easy slogans, just consequences. I read it on a flight and kept underlining lines about trust. Using this with my team soon.
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Unexpectedly useful for my church leadership group. It’s not preachy, just honest about how rules can hurt if the purpose is fuzzy. The owl’s story of two kings sparked a debate. We finished agreeing that authority is loaned, not owned, and must be renewed through fairness, with clarity, consistency, and courage.
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I manage a warehouse crew, not a boardroom, and still saw us in this. The snake’s ‘efficiency’ scenes felt painfully familiar. We’re trying the book’s quiet fixes: open planning, shared metrics, naming responsibilities. Small shift already lowered finger-pointing. Also, the wildfire chapter? Stress test I’ll remember for a long time.
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As a high-school teacher, I used two chapters for discussion. Students immediately spotted the difference between fear and respect. The hedgehog’s questions helped them interrogate school rules, too. It’s rare to get something accessible without being corny. We ended talking about courage as shared risk, not bravado, in real life.
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Book club pick that didn’t divide the room for once. Some read it as management, others as moral theology; both worked. I appreciated the refusal to hand us tidy slogans or a perfect hero. The closing letters opened a conversation about accountability at home and work for many of us.
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