“Little Toot” is a children’s picture book written by Hardie Gramatky. It features Little Toot, a small young tugboat in New York Harbor who does not want to tug. Instead, he would rather play, making figure eights in the harbor and thus being a nuisance to all the other tugboats. But when he ends up all alone on the open ocean as a storm is rolling in, it is up to him to save a grounded ocean liner. The book (G. P. Putnam’s Sons first children’s book) has been continually in print since 1939.

“At the foot of an old, old wharf lives the cutest, silliest little tugboat you ever saw.”

Photos by Anna Iltnere / Sea Library