A New House For Smudge
PreSchool-Grade 2-Two adventures featuring a little mouse in a  blue-dotted pinafore. In New House, Stripe the Badger persuades  his young friend that it's time to move since their beloved home  is too small and the roof leaks. On their walk through the woods  they visit an old house that Stripe had seen earlier. It has a  garden and a river running by. They set to work painting and  scrubbing it and turning it into a country charmer. In the  second book, Smudge is catching water snails at the stream to  put in her jar before throwing them back. Her friends want a  turn, but she is not quite ready to share her net. Before too  long, they get tired of waiting and go upstream to join Goose.  Smudge realizes that it's just no fun catching things alone,  even though she's had a good haul for the day. All's well in the  end, however, as she joins her friends upstream where they all  play together. The plot lines in these two stories are linear  and shallow, and have no particular substance. Done in pencil  and watercolor, the pictures have been dappled with texture,  softening the overall effect. Unfortunately, the artwork extends  inexplicably onto the endpapers. Constance McGeorge's Boomer's  Big Day (Chronicle, 1994) is a stronger story that focuses on  moving day. For a realistic story with a message about family  relationships and moving, try Sally Grindley's A New Room for  William (Candlewick, 2000). Nancy Carlson's How to Lose All Your  Friends (Viking, 1997) is lots more fun and a better choice for  tales dealing with how to be and keep a friend.Roxanne Burg,  Thousand Oaks Library, CACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.