Little Toot

Little Toot the tugboat doesn't want to work. He has too much fun gliding through the calm river and playing thread-the-needle around the docks. Besides, the only sound he can make through his whistle is a small toot-toot-toot, and only silly little balls of smoke come out of his smokestack. And he's afraid of the wild seas. He figures he'll leave the hard work to the other tugboats and his father, Big Toot, who is, after all, the strongest, fastest, loudest tugboat on the entire river. But pretty soon the other tugboats get annoyed with Little Toot, and when Little Toot gets in the way of big J. G. McGillicuddy, everyone, even his friends, makes fun of his childishness. Feeling sad and ashamed, Little Toot decides to show them all what a hardworking tugboat he can be! But before he realizes how far beyond the river he's drifted, the wind whips up, the waves dash and pound against the rocks, and up through the blackened sky of the fiercest storm that even Grandfather Toot has ever seen comes an ocean liner's signal rocket...