Things start out badly for accidental roommates Skunk and Badger and only get worse in this sweet (though occasionally stinky) story featuring an all-new literary theme--badger meets skunk, badger loses skunk, badger gets skunk back. Amy Timberlake writes with whimsical humor reminiscent of A.A. Milne, Arnold Lobel and Kenneth Grahame, which is reinforced by Jon Klassen's splendid illustrations. Working together, they build a world that is both authentic and fantastically original.
When curmudgeonly Badger, a rock scientist doing "Important Rock Work" in his Aunt Lula's borrowed brownstone, opens the door to find a suspiciously friendly skunk with "too much slick in [his] stripe, too much puff in his tail," he quickly shuts the door, hoping the fellow will go away. He doesn't. Skunk, like Badger, has been offered a room in Aunt Lula's row house. Badger, though attached to the persnickety solitariness of his trade, is tugged inexorably toward Skunk's charming ways: candles and mismatched cloth napkins at breakfast, chickens for friends and talk of "Quantum Leaps" and rocket potatoes.
Skunk and Badger--like so many of their literary odd-couple predecessors--take a while to truly connect. In fact, thanks to an excruciating pileup of prejudice and miscommunication, the two overcome the biggest bumps in their road to friendship only as book one in the proposed trilogy comes to a close. Luckily, Edgar Award winner and Newbery Honoree Timberlake (One Came Home; That Girl Lucy Moon) and Caldecott and Greenaway medal-winner Klassen (This Is Not My Hat; Extra Yarn; Sam and Dave Dig a Hole) have no intention of letting this hard-won friendship fade away. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor