Only the Lonely! How To Find A Friend by Maria S. Costa

Squirrel and Rabbit are both new in the neighborhood. Both of them are looking for a friend--in all the wrong places, it seems!

Squirrel figures the playground is a good place to meet a new friend. But no one is there-- no one but a sympathetic earthworm who whispers that he will help!

Rabbit is thinking that the cafe' might be a good place to find a friend. But there's no one to sit with him at the table for two.

He goes out to row his boat on the pond, wondering if he's the only animal anywhere. But even when Rabbit hits a golf ball right into the pond, Squirrel doesn't spot him, even when the golf ball almost falls into his boat.

And when Rabbit sadly lines up his putt, he misses seeing Squirrel falling out of his rowboat.

And even when Squirrel fills his bucket with acorns and falls off the ladder to his treehouse, bucket, acorns and all, the dejected Rabbit mutters as he passes by...

REALLY, I DON'T KNOW WHERE ELSE TO LOOK!"

But fate steps in, when lonesome Squirrel, carrying a tall stack of books to while away the lonely hours, collides with Rabbit, skating full speed with a basket of carrots, and it's the beginning of a great friendship, in Maria S. Costa's story, How to Find a Friend (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and two seemingly star-crossed lonely critters who will never miss each other again. Young readers will love the comedy of errors as the two would-be friends just miss encountering each other on each page, and will be hoping for more stories of Rabbit and Squirrel to come.