Starred Review Buddy the dog is bored on a rainy day, but he's in for a surprise when a small box arrives with a mysterious prickly thing inside, who introduces himself as Earl. Inquisitive Buddy asks, "What are you, Earl?" Earl replies that he's a race car, but Buddy's not convinced. Tricky Earl agrees, "I'm not a race car. I'm a giraffe." That's still not right, but Earl soon turns the tables on Buddy: "You're very tall. Are you a skyscraper?" Their lighthearted game of pretend culminates in a thrilling pirate adventure on the sofa, and Buddy knows he's found a friend. Though savvy little ones will likely recognize that Earl is a hedgehog (despite his insistence that he's a talking hairbrush), Sookocheff's cute, cartoonish pictures, rendered with thick black outlines and flat patches of subdued color, cleverly illustrate Earl's imaginative japes. When he claims to be a race car, the holes in his box transform into tires, and when he's a sea urchin, the blue area rug is a pool of sea water. Though the muted palette may not immediately dazzle, it's the perfect backdrop for Buddy's and Earl's wild imaginations to take center stage. Their charmingly raucous game of make-believe is appealing enough, but the sneaky lesson in deductive reasoning makes this frolicsome, read-aloud-friendly picture book truly outstanding.

K-Gr 2 On a rainy afternoon Buddy the dog is bored and lonely, trapped in the house with his family. Watching the raindrops fall, he is surprised when his owner Meredith brings in a box that contains an odd looking object. The new "thing" is indeed alive and introduces itself as Earl. Since Buddy is not sure what type of thing Earl could be, the two begin a guessing game to solve the mystery. The inventive Earl claims to be many things, from a race car to a giraffe, and the two embark on a treacherous voyage using the sofa as their mock pirate ship. Despite the lack of a definitive answer regarding Earl's identity (he appears to be a hedgehog), Buddy is confident that ultimately Earl is nothing less than a friend. The neutral tones of the illustrations reflect the mood of a stormy day, and the depictions of the animal characters using Acryl Gouache are both soft and playful. VERDICT A simple story for animal loving readers and proponents of imaginative play. Claire Moore, Darien Library, CT