My Friend and I

When a boy moves in next door, the story's narrator, a little girl with very long brown braids, quickly becomes his friend. ""We lined up all of our toys,"" she says. ""We had three dolls, two cars, four trucks, two bears, one lion, six balls, two soldiers, and some string."" But one day the friends tussle over the boy's new stuffed bunny, leaving the toy without ears and the relationship on the rocks--until the pair figures out how to patch things up, figuratively and literally. Jahn-Clough (123 Yippie) never betrays her narrator's perspective, neither in the text nor in her paintings. Childlike compositions in circus colors, applied with thick strokes, capture the winning earnestness and gleeful creativity of a schoolroom art project. The comic finale--in which the children celebrate their repaired friendship by plastering all their toys with Band-Aids--gets the point across efficiently and agreeably. Ages 3-8. (Mar.)