THE WEEPING WILLOW

A spat separates best friends, but only temporarily, in this slender sequel to The Tornado Watchers (p. 882). Ike and Buzzy are forever bickering over little things, but Buzzy’s contentiousness becomes so annoying when the two try to construct a tree house in a willow that at last Ike just hauls the scrap wood off to build a playhouse for his little sister Mem. When Buzzy finds out that Ike used the wood without asking, he stomps off in a huff, leaving Ike with only Mem as a playmate—some fun, but not the same. Alter adds staid ink drawings of nearly expressionless children to this low-key episode. In the end, Ike and Buzzy make up, with a bit of bending on both sides, and persuade an at-first-reluctant Mem to let them drag the playhouse beneath the willow. The relationships here, particularly the sibling one, show some texture, but the author puts less into delineating his characters than just having them model mannerly and unmannerly behavior. A utilitarian tale for new chapter book readers. (Fiction. 7-9)