The latest book in the Fox & Chick series features three stories designed for beginning readers but equally enjoyable for reading aloud. In the first chapter, Chick invites himself to a sleepover at Fox's house, but only one of them actually sleeps. In the second chapter, Chick finds his hammer, loses it again, uses a rock to drive a nail into a wall, and hangs a picture of his hammer from the nail. Finally, an excited Chick talks Fox into throwing him a surprise birthday party, and then surprises Fox with an unwelcome revelation. In the pleasing and often amusing illustrations, Ruzzier uses the conventions of comics (visual narrative sequences, speech balloons) to motivate beginning readers with the dual reward of verbal and visual humor. Original storytelling with quirky, character-driven humor.

Following their wacky antics in the previous two volumes (The Party and Other Stories, rev. 7/18; The Quiet Boat Ride and Other Stories, rev. 7/19), this charmingly mismatched pair returns for three more stories. The first begins after bedtime. Chick shows up uninvited for a sleepover, waking Fox and eventually taking over the entire bed, leaving Fox tired and awake on the floor. Next, Chick finds a lost hammer and decides to put a nail in a brick wall, but the hammer goes missing again before the deed is done. Fox suggests an alternative that gets the nail in the wall -- a perfect place to hang a newly painted picture of a missing hammer. (Observant readers will know where to find the hammer, but Chick settles for admiring the painting of it.) The final story involves a surprise party for Chick's birthday, one that Chick demands Fox throw. Clever Fox manages to make it a surprise in spite of interfering Chick, but in the end the real surprise is for Fox. (It is not Chick's birthday at all.) The offbeat tales told through comic-panel art and colorful settings, combined with the excitable, bossy Chick and the easygoing, sensible Fox, create another installment in this comics-style picture-book series that works for readers and listeners alike. That brick wall from the second story can be found on the endpapers -- bare at the front but covered with pictures of presumably missing objects at the back -- tying together the latest exploits of these two friends beautifully. Julie Roach