(2) 1-3 Illustrated by Jon Klassen. Badger is perfectly content to live alone in a brownstone owned by Aunt Lula, which he's arranged to suit his rather particular preferences, when a surprise roommate turns up. (It would have been less of a surprise had he not been too busy to read Aunt Lula's letters.) Skunk needs a home--"Not everyone wants a skunk"--but the impetuous and sometimes literally effusive Skunk's interference with scientist Badger's Important Rock Work just won't do. The personality pairing familiar to readers of Frog and Toad and the like should help ease the transition to this more challenging text, with its advanced vocabulary ("He'd shelved [the rocks and minerals] alphabetically with the most delicate specimens wrapped in tissue paper"), long paragraphs, and only occasionally interspersed illustrations. Those illustrations, some in black and white and some in warm color, echo the text's old-fashioned feel. This new series, with its humor and understated (well, sometimes) emotions, deserves a far warmer welcome than the one Skunk initially receives.

Reviewer: Shoshana Flax | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2021

(1) 4-6 When her older sister Agatha is found dead (but unrecognizable), Georgie is certain that there has been a mistake. With her sister's unwelcome suitor Billy McCabe, Georgie sets off to find her sister, or, at least, to find out how she died. The adversarial relationship between Georgie and Billy provides superb comic relief in a gripping, gritty story set in 1870s Wisconsin.

Reviewer: Kathleen T. Horning | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2013

(4) 4-6 Junior-high activist Lucy Moon organizes a postcard–writing campaign after grumpy Miss Wiggins fences off the town sledding hill. Lucy becomes a hero, then a pariah, then an icon, as evidenced--and undercut--by the heavy-handed third-person narration. Lucy's triumphs and struggles (including her mother's extended absence) are well drawn, making the narrator's shrill pleas to celebrate nonconformity unnecessary.

Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Adam Rex. One morning, a very dirty cowboy decides to take his annual bath. But once he's clean, his faithful dog doesn't recognize his scent and won't relinquish his clothes. Timberlake's twangy storytelling and funny phonetic speech bubbles ("Whoorrugg?" asks the dog) and Rex's sepia-toned illustrations, full of inspired ways to conceal the cowboy's nudity, make for a humorous and original tall tale.

Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz