You Gotta Be Squidding Me! Roof Octopus by Lucy Branam

It started with a tap at the window that woke Nora up.

There it sat--a octopus on her apartment building--a big one,

Nora has to tell somebody--quick!

Her dad, stirring waffle batter, gives a quizzical smile and her mother takes a quick look out the window and reports no octopus, until--a large tentacle wraps itself around the fire escape outside the window!

The neighbors are all abuzz, but they decide to keep their, er, housing situation quiet.

"It may be part of a migration," her father suggests hopefully.

Everyone decides to avert their gaze and pretend they know NOTHING--until Mr. Dodson's cheery wave encourages the Octopus to reach down and give him a hand washing his car. After all--many hands make light work!

And soon the helpful octopus is accepted. He walks the dogs and helps the mailman with his deliveries, and carries the neighbors' groceries upstairs, and soon he's accepted as part of the neighborhood. Nora starts making grandiose plans to take him to school for show and tell.

And then one morning...

... the Octopus was gone.

Nora is terribly disappointed that she won't get to be the star of show and tell time, but then one day, while she is in the middle of a math worksheet, there's a tap on the schoolroom window....

Mary and her famous lamb have nothing on Nora and her story of the octopus who followed her to school, in Lucy Branam's jolly story, Roof Octopus (Sleeping Bear, 2018). Rogerio Coelho's dreamlike rococo illustrations give this fun story its fantasy setting, just right for author Branam's tongue-in-cheek telling.