MO AND BEAU

Playtime for a very small, very energetic mouse and a very large, very sleepy bear.

Eager to play, little Mo tugs on a tuft of big Beau’s fur. From then on it’s a game of mousie-see, mousie-do as Beau opens his eyes, bares his teeth, takes a deep breath, roars, bristles, stretches, scratches, yawns, and drops back off to sleep. That’s it. Drawn in scribbly strokes of brown crayon on rough paper for an extra-shaggy look, Beau towers hugely over his pale, pink-nosed accoster and seems barely to notice him even when he climbs up for a between-the-ears snooze. Mo’s nap lasts only a page turn—whereupon he’s off to cavort across the endpapers. The narrative is framed in short declarative sentences, with occasional changes of type size or color for variety. Ho and hum.

A bland, dispensable alternative to Suzanne Bloom’s brilliant A Splendid Friend, Indeed (2005).