SPARKY AND EDDIE

Best friends Sparky and Eddie are a pair of easy- readin'/easy-ridin' cowboys. It's rodeo day and the big-boots- wearing Sparky and ten-gallon-hat-wearing Eddie smack their jeans and gallop on their sock-headed horses, ya-hooing all the way to school. Tying up teddy bears, searching for boots, and tossing stale tortillas are slated events in the all-day rodeo. The tiebreaker is to come up with uses for a bandanna. When Eddie's team wins, Sparky gets weepy, and the obvious use for the bandanna is drying cowboy tears. A palette of sunset-colored watercolors imparts just the right amount of bustin'-at-the-seams energy, from the lasso-twirling principal to a class loop-de-looping themselves into a tangled heap. A galloping tale of friendship, with enough cowboy antics to satisfy new readers, budding Buffalo Bills, and Annie Oakleywannabes alike. (Fiction. 5-7)