FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS

Maggie and Chester are best friends, but because he hates the freezing North, where they live, and she is miserable in the sizzling tropics, where they row for a vacation, they decide to split—keeping in touch via postcards and visiting "just as often as they can." It's a contemporary solution to be sure, but a flat one as stories go. And though Rubel's grimacing, pop-ugly animals put on a strenous performance (Maggie turns green in rough waters, bright red in the sun) and her backgrounds range from agitated to overwrought, it's all merely strident without any narrative zap to back it up. After their happy pairing in last year's Rotten Ralph, Gantos and Rubel seem as ill-matched here as Maggie and Chester.