From TikTok to book — ‘Little o Wanted to Know’ an imaginative fable for all

You can draw a line — a very long, true line — from Aesop of ancient Greece to Rhea Sarason of present-day Albuquerque. Both are authors of fables.

“Aesop’s Fables” are famous tales often featuring animals or inanimate objects that teach moral lessons and offer bits of wisdom.

One well-remembered fable is “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” The ant stores food for the winter while the grasshopper plays around. The moral? Plan ahead.

Another well-known fable is “The Tortoise and the Hare.” The plodding tortoise surprisingly defeats the faster hare. Why? The tortoise believes “slow and steady wins the race,” while the hare is arrogant, so he slacks off.

Which brings us to Sarason in the 21st century.

She has written an imaginative, instructive, book-length story with delightful watercolor illustrations titled “Little o Wanted to Know: A Fable About Finding Your True Self.”

Like “Aesop’s Fables,” Sarason’s book is for all ages.

“I think all experience in life is about trying to find your own place and who we are,” Sarason said in a phone interview.

She said the story sprouted from a prompt from her therapist about the letter i.

“I started i as a line,” she said. “I wrote a short story about the letter i. It was just putting a blue pen to copy paper. No color. (My own) very simple illustrations.”

She posted it on TikTok and it got over a half million views.

When she showed the story to her therapist, the therapist told her she didn’t answer the prompt: “She said it was supposed to be a story about being crammed in to taking up space.”

So Sarason went back and this time worked with the letter o, and expanded the story.

She posted it on TikTok, too.

“It blew up pretty quickly. It got hundreds of comments and likes and saves,” Sarason recalled. “Everybody in their TikTok comments said ‘Please make this into a book.’”

Sarason was emboldened.

She signed with a literary agent who loved the story. The book went to auction and a major publishing house, HarperCollins, ended up buying it.

Sarason said she wanted to be sure the book would be marketed to children and adults.

“I want parents to read it to their kids and to get something from it themselves, and I want young children to grow up with the story and look at it in a different light when they grow up,” she said.

The book could help parents guide their children as they navigate behavioral changes and sometimes difficult social situations as they grow up.

Starting early in the story, readers see Little o questioning everything. She — Little o is female — is persistent, curious and dissatisfied with her assigned place in the alphabet, always following the letter “n” and always preceding the letter “p.”

And o is bored singing the same alphabet song. Why not try singing the alphabet from “z” back to “a,” she wondered.

The other 25 letters of the alphabet get tired of o questioning the norm.

Her response is to roll away from the alphabet line. Liberated, she rolls downhill with no brakes.

She meets Oval and Circle, and then Rectangle and Triangle, but Little o doesn’t fit in with them.

She cries so hard her tears become a stream carrying her away with low self-esteem, not a desirable feeling for any letter of the alphabet.

Floating into Sphere and Cube, Little o falls. As she gets up, a bubble fills her space.

Little o feels she finally belongs. But then… but then… a storm bursts her bubble.

Again rolling away, she doesn’t want to be something she isn’t. She’s ready to speak her mind, but she’s lost again.

She yells at her shadow for being too much or not enough.

Soon Little o sees she is no longer little. She can also be bigger, as in uppercase.

She encounters a number that resembles her — Zero. To o’s way of thinking Zero has value: You need zero, or nothing, if something is being created.

The story advises, “Your worth isn’t within your shape or size or if you’re filled or empty or how you look in others’ eyes. Love every part of yourself and then you’ll see your soul goes beyond time and space for zero implies infinity.”

Infinity is so special. It means no beginning and no end.

Inspired, Little o heads off on a new journey of self-discovery. She doesn’t care what others think.

The story closes with this thought: “If you look close enough you’ll find O within yOu.”

“Little o” is Sarason’s first book. Hopefully, the first of “Sarason’s Fables.”

A graduate of Albuquerque High School, she is an artist, an artisan and a yoga teacher.

The book’s illustrator is Barroux, an artist who goes by a mononym.