Wanted: Best Friend

Cat advertises for a new playmate when his best friend Mouse refused to play checkers

After being repeatedly thrashed at checkers, Mouse suggests to Cat a game of crazy eights. Cat insists on checkers, and Mouse huffs off homeward. Cat places an advertisement for a new best friend in the newspaper. Mole responds, but he's a chowhound who makes a hash of Cat's checkerboard. ``You cannot be a slob and be my best friend,'' Cat states. Next comes Otter, a hyperactive sportsman who causes a commotion by hurling balls around Cat's house before he is shown the door. Last comes Raccoon, a skateboarding enthusiast, who nearly kills Cat by sending him skittering into heavy traffic on a board, then laughs when Cat crashes. ``You cannot laugh at me and be my best friend.'' Cat and Mouse reunite--for a game of crazy eights. Munsinger's watercolors add charm to the tale, whose ending will be clear to most preschoolers from the outset. If, as Monson (The Secret of Sanctuary Island, 1991, etc.) suggests, the making of friends is an exercise in mutual concessions, Cat is less than accommodating toward Mole and Otter (skip mean-spirited Raccoon). The final lesson is exclusionary: ``Best friend'' means the friend Cat can best tolerate in a field of rejects. (Picture book. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ages 3^-7. Cat and Mouse are best friends, but Cat keeps winning at checkers (he sometimes makes up new rules), so Mouse wants to play crazy-eights. Cat refuses, so Mouse leaves in disgust. Then Cat tries out a succession of new best friends. First comes Mole, but he's a greedy slob. Then comes Otter, but he's a macho jock who scores touchdowns in the living room and throws soccer balls into the fireplace. Then comes Raccoon, who makes Cat skateboard until he lands in the garbage. Finally, Cat welcomes back his old friend Mouse with joy, and they settle cozily into their old routine, except now they do play crazy-eights. As always, Munsinger's wonderful pen-and-ink and watercolor pictures express very human feelings in animal body language. We all know these types: the slob, the bully, the klutz. Furious Mouse stalking out the door in high dudgeon evokes a part of every friendship, as does the combination of wild slapstick and affectionate order. Hazel Rochman