Everything seems ducky for rodent best friends Brian and Bob, who spend their days in Pete's Pet Palace, "doing what guinea pigs do best—eating, sleeping, and playing I Spy." Ripper (Little Brown Bushrat
) mirrors the simple pleasures of their lives in her streamlined rendering of their bodies: shorthaired Brian is little more than a bottom-heavy ovoid with two dots for eyes, while Bob's "long, tufty" fur is evident only in the way it shoots past the ink outlines of his plump body to form little peaks. Then Bob is adopted, and Brian falls into despair—until he's adopted by what turns out to be the very same family: "By that evening sitting together in their cage playing I Spy, the two little guinea pigs had almost forgotten they had ever been apart." Ripper's unadorned prose and pared-down watercolor compositions eloquently describe the joy of close friendship and the sorrow that comes from its loss. Ages 2-5. (Sept.)
