The Great Gracie Chase: Stop that Dog!
Poor Gracie. All this little pooch wanted was a quiet house, with "the  kitty sleeping on the windowsill, the big dog sleeping on the couch, the quiet  fish goingploop-ploop." But then one day the painters came. In a "big,  noisy truck," with "clangy ladders and big-person voices." Clearly, there was  only one solution: "She barked and barked and told them to go outside. But do  you know what?Graciewas put outside!"And so begins the Great Gracie Chase, as this otherwise obedient little pup goes  from miffed to mischievous, leading everyone from the paperboy to the delivery  woman to the painters themselves on a town-wide caper, in search of the one  thing she wants most--a little peace and quiet.As a proven master of the cute but not cloying, Cynthia Rylant (author and  illustrator ofDog HeavenandCat Heaven) sets a  fun pace for little Gracie Rose (also the name of her real-life dog). But the  real winner inChaseis rascally illustrator Mark Teague, who infuses wit  and bounce into subject matter that's decidedly more mundane than in some of his  other work (How Do Dinosaurs Say  Goodnight?,The Lost and  Found). (Ages 4 to 8)Paul Hughes