MATT SPROUTS AND THE DAY NORA ATE THE SUN

An unusually perspicacious goat helps a Colorado seventh grader build character in this tumultuous summer fling.

As in Matt Sprouts and the Curse of the Ten Broken Toes (2024), Eicheldinger embeds insistent messages about the importance of kindness and empathy into a contrived (if generally entertaining) ruckus. Looking for a summer job that isn’t labor-intensive but mindful of his dad’s requirement that it should “build character,” Matt agrees to tend Nora, a neighboring farmer’s googly-eyed goat, for eight days. After first discovering that Nora will eat anything from shoes to his girlfriend Grace’s science project and can escape any pen, even one secured with a combination lock, he goes on to learn—from interactions with the oddly reticent new kid, Bobby Joe—the truth of his mother’s repeated observation that the best way to understand others is to learn what’s in their (metaphorical) backpack. Led by Nora, who turns out to be a good listener as well as comic relief, a lively cast buoys the tale and proves bighearted enough to show general willingness to make and accept apologies. As a result, all conflicts arising due to mishaps and misunderstandings are dispelled in the end. The human cast is largely cued as white in both narrative and occasional humorous cartoon line drawings.

Lesson heavy but leavened with humor and humanity.