The team behind Tyrannosaurus Dad presents a picture book that probes a misunderstanding between two best friends.
The girl narrator's mood comes through in Matt Myers's (A Is for Musk Ox) portrait of her slouched under the weight of disappointment, anger and sadness. A splatter of blue and purple paints offer evidence of her having thrown down her paintbrushes, along with crumpled papers. James, who appears opposite on the right-hand page, peers out from an angry smattering of the paints from her cast-aside brushes. The narrator traces the telephone game that led to her upset: "James told Aiden, who tells everything to Hunter,..." through a line of a half-dozen others, "that I think I am perfect." This line of overlarge type also peeks out from an angry splash of violet paint. Liz Rosenberg charts the overlong day for the lonely narrator without her best friend to share it. Throughout the pages, James persists in trying to find out what's wrong. Myers magnifies the friends' emotional states by rendering them in realistic watercolors while painting their surrounding bus passengers and classmates in monochromatic watercolor images. James's persistence finally pays off, and the narrator realizes that the game of telephone twisted what began as a compliment into an insult.
This short book delivers a big life lesson: a true friend stays his or her course no matter what, and has faith that the truth will win out. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness