Taking Turns: My Friend Ben Won't Share by Charles Beyl

I'M CHIP AND THIS IS MY FRIEND BEN.

BEN COMES TO PLAY AT MY HOUSE.

Chip and Ben make a good pair. They like to play the same thing, but with different parts of the job. Chip likes to build big forts and Ben likes to construct the towers inside. Ben likes to make up stories, and Chip likes to draw the illustrations for the stories. And when Dad brings them sandwiches to eat outside, they split the lunch, each eating the part he likes best..

In good weather Chip and Ben play trucks. One sunny day Ben only wants to play with Chip's big truck. He doesn't give Chip a turn to have his truck back.

CHIP WANTS HIS DUMP TRUCK.

Chip grabs the front of the truck, and Ben holds on to the back of the truck. They both pull as hard as they can.

SNAP!

The truck is now in two pieces. Chip doesn't want to play with Ben anymore, and Ben goes home alone.

But soon Chip finds making forts with no towers is not much fun. Drawing pictures isn't so great without a story to put them in, either. Meanwhile Ben wonders who is going to eat the twigs in his sandwiches.

It's time for a truce, in Charles Beyl's My Friend Ben Won't Share (A Chip and Ben book) (Albert Whitman, 2021), and with the judicious use of Duck Tape and the help of Mallard, the two parts of the truck are mended, and now perhaps a bit wiser, Chip and Ben are back on the road again, in this early reader story of a happily mended friendship. Kirkus Reviews writes, "... a pleasingly subtle variation on a familiar theme."