Friendship, Blendship! Chester's Way by Kevin Henkes

CHESTER HAD HIS OWN WAY OF DOING THINGS.

Chester and his friend Wilson were very punctilious. Chester always cut his sandwiches in triangles. He always got out of bed on the same side. He never left the house without his first-aid kit and double-knotted shoestrings. Wilson and Chester always signalled their turns on their bikes. They both never slid head-first into the plate in baseball. And on Halloween their costumes always went together, like pepper and salt shakers or ham and eggs. They did everything with each other.

"SOMETIMES I CAN'T TELL THOSE TWO APART. . . LIKE TWO PEAS IN A POD!" SAID CHESTER'S MOTHER.

His father agreed.

And then a new girl moved into the neighborhood. She did everything in a very unique way!

"I AM LILLY! I AM THE QUEEN.

I LIKE EVERYTHING!

Lilly plastered herself with bandaids so everyone would think she was very brave. She always carried a loaded squirt pistol when she left home. She talked backwards!

SHE NEVER LEFT HER HOUSE WITHOUT WEARING ONE OF HER DISGUISES.

Chester and Wilson hid when they saw Lilly coming, and when she phoned one or the other, they disguised their voices so they wouldn't have to play with her. She was just too weird for Chester and Wilson's taste.

But one day a couple of older bullies stopped them on the bike path, yelling and making fun of their precise hand signals and riding circles around them so that they couldn't move. Wilson and Chester were frightened! It was a scary situation, until...

A FIERCE-LOOKING CAT WITH HORRIBLE FANGS JUMPED OUT OF THE BUSHES....

The big boys pedaled away fast. Now who was frightened?

"ARE YOU WHO I THINK YOU ARE?" CHESTER ASKED.

Of course the fierce-looking cat with the water pistol is Lilly, and Chester and Wilson soon discover that her weird ways could sometimes be a good thing, in Kevin Henkes' classic story about friendship, in Chester's Way(Greenwillow Books).

It's different strokes for different folks, as Lilly introduces them to cookie-cutter shaped sandwiches and popping wheelies, and the boys teach Lilly the proper hand signals on her bike and how to double-knot her shoelaces. And Chester and Wilson learn to talk backwards so the three of them have their own secret language!

Of these brand-new different-drummer friends, Horn Book says, "The virtues of variety, experimentation, and friendship are deftly handled in the amusing, believable story."

Read more about Lilly, in Keven Henkes' best-selling Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse.