TROLLS, GO HOME!

Three hairy trolls find the road to acceptance particularly rocky when they try to settle in a quiet suburb. Humiliated at being defeated by a mere goat, Egbert Troll brings his wife Nora and their son Ulrik all the way from Norway to a house in Biddlesden. However, he then begins to repent when it proves impossible to find decorative cow pies for their distressingly clean new house, juicy young goats to eat or much of a welcome from their horrified neighbors, the Priddles. Ulrik gets off on the wrong paw at school, too, after following the advice of sly classmate Warren Priddle to greet the teacher with a bite. Beech’s occasional ink-and-wash views of dismayed “peeples” facing grody-looking trolls decked out in bones and random tufts of hair underscore the lightly comic tone. Told almost entirely from the Trolls’ point of view, the tale ends happily after Ulrik saves Warren from a charging goat on a class trip to a farm—by singing a sweet song that also earns the young troll a spot in the school’s talent show. Despite Egbert’s bluster, no goats are harmed in the course of this mild farce. (Fantasy. 9-11)