TROUBLE WITH TATTLE-TAILS

In the second Fabled Stables book, Auggie must rescue a one-of-a-kind creature—then rescue a town from it.

Auggie loves caring for the creatures of the Fabled Stables, doing everything he can to make them happy. However, he struggles to figure out the best way to do that for the Unfeeling Brute, as she’s a big, caterpillarlike creature lacking a mouth, eyes, and other features. As he ponders his problem, suddenly the stables magically expand, indicating a new tenant needs to be rescued: It’s the Tattle-Tail. Auggie and his best friends, Willa the Wisp and Fen, a Stick-in-the-Mud, head off to Rainbow’s End and find two crises afoot. First, someone’s stolen the village’s magical pot of gold; more pressingly, everyone in town sports colorful, fluffy, sentient tails that have recently attached themselves to the populace and are ratting out all of their embarrassing secrets and misdeeds. The tattling is so silly and the tails illustrated so joyfully that they’ll delight readers, especially when Auggie’s attempts to free the town backfire in funny ways. Another running joke concerns beeswax stuck in Fen’s ears, causing him to comically mishear other characters. In between misunderstandings, Fen solves the robbery—unmasking the thieves as foes faced in the series opener—and inspires Auggie’s solution to the Tattle-Tail problem, which leads to a happy ending for the Brute as well. Auggie’s depicted as beige; Rainbow’s End has background diversity.

Funny, charming, and bighearted.