Chicks Just Want to Have Fun! A Friend for Bentley by Paige Keiser

Bently was the only pig on Sunset Farm.

And when you're the only, it can get a bit lonely.

Bently has no one who wants to wallow in the mud with him.

The sheep found it too dirty for their clean white wool.

The chickens gagged at the sight of his gloppy slop.

They preferred seeds and worms.

And NO ONE wanted to do Crossword Puzzles! BO-RING!

But one day lonely Bentley hears something that sounds like a distinctive OINK.

The source turns out to be a baby chick taking a dust bath in the dirt and oinking as loudly as she can.

"I thought I heard another pig!" Bently said, noticeably disappointed.

Daisy the Chick excitedly explains that she wants to be a pig, but wallowing in mud is too hard for her, so she is working up to it by taking dust baths. Bently offers her some of his slop. Sadly she isn't as great at gobbling slop as she is at oinking. But she's already a whiz at crossword puzzles.

It's a friendship made in heaven and for a while Bently is never lonely with Daisy to share all his favorite things. But as Daisy begins to grow into a chicken, she comes to dislike mud baths and drops slop for earthworms, and she's no longer so fond of crossword games. But before she completely loses all her crossword chops, she enters and wins a contest, and the grand prize is--

A PIG!

Now Daisy is happily at home in the hen house, and thanks to her friendship, Bently has a porcine pal with whom to take a wallow, in Paige Keiser's A Friend for Bently (Harper, 2019), told cheerily and filled with charmingly Disneyesque farm animals doing their thing (except for the occasional all-nighter crossword contest). Handling differences that develop between friends is here handled with the sort of insightful and kind understanding that keeps a long-term friendship shipshape.