As with her marvelous Bunny Days, Tao Nyeu uses a limited palette of lime green, cornflower blue and cantaloupe to convey a light mood and a hint of nostalgia as she explores the many shades of friendship.
Squid, with his green polka dots, four pairs of arms and telltale arrow-like green tentacles, sports a wool hat with a pom-pom. His best friend is blue-spotted Octopus (also with four pairs of arms, but no arrow-like tentacles), wearing a plaid cap. A quartet of brief tales charts the mostly ups and a few downs in their friendship. In the first story, "The Quarrel," Squid knits Octopus eight socks, only to hear Octopus insist that he wears mittens--but they reach a peaceful compromise after seeking out (and ignoring) the advice of Wise Old Turtle. Each has his talents: while Squid knits, Octopus paints, sculpts and photographs. As one of their friends points out, Lobster serves as Octopus's muse.
After a dream in which he starred as "Super Squid," the fellow wakes up feeling ordinary--until Octopus reminds Squid of all the good things he does for his friends and makes him feel "super from head to tentacle." In a cutaway view (Squid's dream of having "X-ray vision") of the inside of a submarine, older readers will appreciate a few salty puns, such as a raccoon and platypus playing "go fish," and a white bear looking very much like the Wonder Bear and caretaker in Bunny Days reading Moby-Dick to some white rabbits.
Youngsters will enjoy knowing the true function of "The Hat" that "float[s] down from above," even as Octopus and his fellow sea creatures hazard erroneous guesses (hat, flowerpot and soup bowl, among them; our favorite: a fish calling a spur a "can opener" and "pizza cutter"). Fun side conversations at Yum Yum's soup stand come to fruition a few pages later. The closer, "The Fortune Cookie," affirms the duo's friendship, through good fortune and bad. Eagle-eyed fans will note Mr. and Mrs. Goat inside the submarine. There's plenty to pore over in these pages, and much fodder for discussion in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms about how to be a good friend. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: With a limited palette that looks good enough to eat and two eight-tentacled pals, Tao Nyeu portrays a boundless friendship.