Oscar Seeks a Friend

Oscar the skeleton is missing a tooth, and he’s cruelly self-conscious about his looks and prospects (“It’s hard for a small, ugly skeleton to make friends”). A pigtail-wearing human girl who’s burying a tooth to help her dream come true offers it to Oscar if he’ll help her find a friend. She shows him the beautiful places in her world (“She said she’d like to take her friend to a meadow and show them a rainbow”), and he reciprocates, bringing her to a dreamy flower-filled underworld of skeletons who ride velocipedes and browse library shelves. Pawlak’s paper collage characters fairly jump from the page, with expressive, engaging eyes and details worth returning to. Though the girl never indicates that Oscar is the friend she’s wished for, she promises to return, and Oscar gives the tooth back, having found that a new smile wasn’t needed for friendship or self-worth, after all. Ages 5–8. [em](Oct.) [/em]