Yeehaw! Aroooo!: Bubba and Beau: Best Friends by Kathi Appelt

Not since Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad Are Friends rolled off the presses has there been such an unlikely but sympatico pair of buddies between the covers of a book. Bubba is a baby who loves to crawl in the mud and chew on things; Beau is a hound dog puppy to loves to do both, too. Bubba loves his pinky-pink blankie and hates soap; Beau is with him all the way on both.

In the first book about the baby buddies, Bubba and Beau: Best Friends, the pair face a downright onery sit-uation when Bubba's mama, Mama Pearl, ups and washes the pink blankie. Now Bubba and Beau love that blankie just the way it is:

Beau loved that blankie, too. He loved its snappity-snap sound. He loved its toasty warmth. And best of all, he loved its smelly smell.

Bubba loves the blankie because it smells like Beau, and Beau loves the blankie because it smells like Bubba. But when Mama Pearl snatches it and runs it through the wash, it's just not the same:

Its pinky-pink turned pale. Its cottony-soft turned soggy. Its snappity-snap turned flat. Its toasty-warm turned shivery.
Worst of all, it smelled like SOAP!

Fortunately for the sad buckaroos, Mama Pearl is on a roll. She snatches and soaps up first Bubba and then Beau, leaving them both smelling like, well, SOAP. When Mama Pearl takes the clean and dry blankie down off the clothesline and hands it back, Bubba and Beau happily fall asleep on a blankie that's still got all the right stuff and that smells--just like them.

Kathi Appelt's text is Texas terrific, and Arthur Howard's devoted dog and human families are just plain longhorn lovable on every page. Even Big Bubba's truck Earl is a rootin' tootin' lollapalooza, just like this book!