Buddy and Earl Go Exploring

Starred review from December 1, 2015
There are few things as pleasurable as a little nighttime adventure in which you get to trash the kitchen. Chums Buddy the dog and Earl the hedgehog have had an eventful day and are ready for some slumber. At least Buddy is. Earl looks down from his cage at Buddy on the floor and whispers, "Wish me bon voyage." Once Buddy is told what bon voyage means, he wants to know more, even if it does give him the collywobbles. Well, it means Earl is going to run, run, run. Pooped, Earl looks around: "This place looks eerily similar to the place I just left." (The promise and treachery of the exercise wheel.) But there are other places to explore. It is squeeze-your-heart charming when Earl turns Buddy's water bowl into a moonlit lake, and Buddy--the clumsy literalist--knocks over the garbage can only to find gold: meatloaf. There are monsters to tend with--hairbrush-eating purses, menacing vacuum cleaners--but better, there are fine sentences with which to wrestle: "It was a spur-of-the-moment decision"; "Wherever the road leads me....However long it takes." Drawn with spare linework and great blocks of soft, dreamy color in a nighttime palette, the pals' setting appropriately shifts between mundane and extraordinary, just like their adventure. Roll, fetch, bite. Life is good for Buddy and Earl in this aerobic exercise of the imagination. (Picture book. 4-7)

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February 1, 2016

PreS-Gr 2-In this delightful follow-up to Buddy and Earl (Groundwood, 2015), the trouble-making duo embark on another escapade. After their owners retire for the night, Earl the adventurous hedgehog escapes from his cage and invites Buddy the loyal dog to join him on a wild romp around the kitchen. Transformed by Earl's hyperactive imagination, the garbage bin becomes a mountain, Buddy's water bowl turns into a glacial lake, and a hairbrush stuck in a purse appears as a lady hedgehog trapped by a monster. Though at times skeptical regarding Earl's outrageous claims, Buddy nevertheless follows his friend's lead, exploring mountains and fighting monsters...and inadvertently destroying the kitchen in the process. A final, wordless spread shows Earl and Buddy snoozing peacefully amid utter chaos, their owner's slippered foot about to enter the kitchen. Sookocheff's acrylic and gouache illustrations in subdued gray, lavender, blue, and beige tones perfectly capture the quiet feel of a nighttime kitchen. Her cartoonish portrayal of Buddy and Earl is both amusing and expressive, wonderfully complementing Fergus's humorous prose. VERDICT A neat story with enough hilarious high jinks to make young readers giggle out loud and look forward to more Buddy and Earl adventures.-Yelena Alekseyeva-Popova, formerly at Chappaqua Library, NY

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2016
Buddy (dog) and Earl (hedgehog) return for a nocturnal adventure. Without leaving the kitchen, the two take a dip in a "silvery lake" and rescue a "lovely lady hedgehog" from a "monster." The comic tension between the real and the imagined is just as evident here as in Buddy and Earl. Again, Sookocheff wrings an astounding amount of personality out of her simple, cartoony illustrations.

(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

May 1, 2016
Friends Buddy (a dog) and Earl (a hedgehog) return in a second adventure (Buddy and Earl, rev. 9/15) -- this time, a nocturnal one. And though they take a dip in a "silvery lake" and rescue a "lovely lady hedgehog" from a "monster," they never leave the kitchen. (Though they do leave it a huge mess.) The comic tension between the real and the imagined, between Buddy's sweet naivete and Earl's cleverness, and between the human and animal universes is just as evident here as in the first book. And again, Sookocheff wrings an astounding amount of expression and personality out of her simple, cartoony, almost monochromatic (browns, blues, purples, and grays) gouache and digital illustrations. The story winds down as the two friends decide they've done enough exploring for the night and go to sleep. But one more page-turn, leading to a wordless last page that reveals the extent of the accidental destruction (and hints at the impending early-morning arrival of the "hideous ogre" with the glasses and the ugly blue housecoat, a.k.a. Dad), will wake readers right up. martha v. parravano

(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)