TUPELO RIDES THE RAILS

In a winsome tale laced with doggy humor, an abandoned canine tags along with a pack of other four-legged fellows searching for new homes, before finding a companion to call her own. Left by the roadside with only her “skanky” sock puppet for company, plucky Tupelo follows her nose to a motley posse of lost BONEHEADS (Benevolent Order of Nature’s Exalted Hounds Earnest And Doggedly Sublime) engaged in the ancient ritual of making wishes on Sirius, the Dog Star. Those wishes soon come true, thanks to the efforts of aptly named hobo Garbage Pail Tex, but in the general scurry of adoptions Tupelo is left alone again. Sweet depicts Tupelo’s odyssey with a mix of sequential panels, full-page scenes and occasional foldouts, all sandwiched between star-strewn endpapers and a timeline laid out in dog years. In the end Tupelo hops aboard a passing train, and Tex himself sits down beside her—so off the two go, “like Sirius and Orion,” to travel the world together “with a little stench.” Fans of the popular stray-animal genre will bid her godspeed. (Picture book. 6-8)