HAVE YOU SEEN CHESTER?

Published far more intriguingly across the pond as Have You Seen Elvis?, this tidy tale links a dog and a cat who battle constantly, until the cat throws in the towel and leaves home. Missing his erstwhile enemy, Buddy the dog ventures out into the scary, alley-cat–filled night to bring him back—enlisting the aid of a feline chorus to convince Chester to give it another go. The two return home, to the delight of their young keeper, and fall asleep nested together, the picture of amity. For her full-length debut, Slater kicks this rather bland plot up a notch with intensely colored, ’50s-style scenes of a pop-eyed, square-headed pooch and a decidedly disheveled cat, set into solid color fields or canted, stylized street scenes. Readers who still find this a little cut-and-dried can seek more nuanced relationships in the likes of Denise Fleming’s Buster (2003) or Peter McCarty’s Hondo and Fabian (2002). (Picture book. 4-6)