K-Gr 3 Many of the most endearing friendships in children's literature, from Pooh and Piglet to Laura Seeger's Dog and Bear (Roaring Brook, 2007), turn on the formulaic but charming incongruity of the main characters' personalities; so it is here. An obscure British idiom, defined as two things that have nothing in common, serves as both title and premise for this "odd couple's" day in New York City. Cheese, the garrulous, hyperbolic English country mouse, and Chalk the dog, who is his long-suffering New York tour guide, are introduced through their postcard correspondence that cleverly depicts their dissimilarities. Cheese, the excitable tourist, tries every Big Apple experience while Chalk is his patient host for a very long day of sightseeing. Narrative text is brief, and most of the story's momentum is expressed through comic-style panels and speech balloons, which in Cheese's case are often exclamatory and colored cheddar yellow. The contrast between the friends is heightened by Warnes's watercolor and pencil cartoons, rendering Cheese as tiny, but with a big mouth, and Chalk as large and pleasant but somewhat stolid. If Cheese's lively vociferations become tedious to some adults, they will no doubt entertain children, who will find his game enthusiasm for everything from subway cockroaches to skating at Rockefeller Center ("Splat!") simply hilarious. Kate McClelland, Perrot Memorial Library, Old Greenwich, CT

English country mouse Cheese visits his canine New Yorker friend Chalk. Through watercolor and pencil illustrations in a roomy comic-strip format, readers enjoy the pleasure of witnessing Cheese's persistent mystification (e.g., he expects to see King Kong at the Empire State Building). The story is a portrait of friendship that calls to mind another thick-as-thieves animal odd couple, Snoopy and Woodstock.

Chalk and Cheese are friends, but they're as different as, well, chalk and cheese. Chalk, a white dog, lives in N.Y.C., and pen-pal Cheese, an English mouse, comes to visit. In expansive, humor-laden art, some drawn in cartoon-strip style, the duo gad about New York, starting in a typical coffee shop and taking subways and taxis to familiar tourist sites like the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. There, Cheese hopes he'll get to see King Kong; instead he gets lost, lured away by the aroma of warm nuts. The duo fall out with each other but always find gentle ways to get back together. What's best is the sheer exuberance both feel about New York, to which this story is a love letter. That said, the usual preschool audience may be too young to appreciate the city references (to say nothing of the allusion to chalk and cheese). But slightly older kids, more familiar with some of the famous sights, will enjoy both the travelogue and the unlikely friendship.

A white dog named Chalk and a cheerful British mouse named Cheese explore New York City together in this well-intentioned but confusing story. A dual design makes the story inherently difficult to follow, as it presents both a brief narrative in an omniscient viewpoint and a cartoon-panel format with speech balloons, requiring repeated awkward shifting between perspectives. The effort might appeal to those few preschoolers who know both England and New York City, but most children will need explanations of such New York references as the subway, King Kong and Rockefeller, as well as clarification of the British expression of dissimilar items going together "like chalk and cheese." Though the watercolor-and-pencil illustrations have a humorous appeal, there is a rather frantic air to the volume in general, exemplified by multiple exclamation marks and words in dialogue rendered in all capital letters. While adult readers who have traveled with little ones will empathize with the indulgent Chalk, its appeal to children is less clear. (Picture book. 4-6)