Too Much of A Good Thing! Tidy by Emily Gravett

Deep in the forest lived a badger named Pete,
who tidied and cleaned and kept everything neat.

Neat is good, right?

But Pete is not satisfied by brushing Fox's fur or picking up twigs.

In fact, Pete takes tidiness too far. He polishes birds' beaks and scrubs outcropping rocks. He clips off forest flowers that clash with each other's colors.

When in the fall leaves begin to, er, fall, Pete scurries around, picking them up and putting them in proper trash receptacles, but when the piles of leaves threaten to get beyond daily pickups, Pete vacuums them up into piles of plastic trash bags.

But then the bare trees look terrible! They've got to go, so Pete hires a backhoe. He digs them up. But now the animals that lived in, inside, and under the trees are homeless and bedraggled. The rain threatens to flood the forest floor, and no matter how well Pete wields his mop, the former forest is a muddy mess.

What to do? Pete pops on his hardhat and brings in the heavy paving machines to cover the ground with concrete, a flooring that is easy to clean.

No mud. No leaves.No mess. No trees.

Perfect!

"I'm hungry" Pete thought.
"I deserve a treat."
So he hunted around
For something to eat.

Hmmm! Pete's got nothing. He heads home but there's no door to his den. There's just... concrete!

There's such a thing as too tidy, in Emily Gravett's thought-provoking Tidy (Simon and Schuster, 2017), as compulsive cleaner Pete learns to his sorrow. It looks like Pete's got a forest restoration project to keep him and his woodsy friends busy until spring.

Gravett's story of a badger with OCD pokes fun at overdoing neatness, but also subtly suggests that when it comes to natural order, deferring to Mother Nature is the way to go. Gravett's rhymes are wry and telling, and her artistic skills are charmingly understated but skillfully thought out, with sly touches, as on the final page, with a hairbrush hidden behind his back, Pete still eyes Fox's gnarly tangled fur with that look in his eye. Of this one, Kirkus Reviews adds, "Alarming, timely, gorgeous, and open-ended, allowing readers the time to think for themselves."

Waking Up Is Hard to Do! Boris and the Worrisome Wakies by Helen Lester

Boris is a little badger who thinks bedtime is bad news.

Sure, lots of little ones resist calling it a day, or, in the case of nocturnal badgers, calling it a night, when badgers are wired to be awake. Sunrise is supposed to mean snooze time, but Boris is always wide awake.

Boris bombards his weary parents with all the usual timeworn kid complaints:

"I need a turkey sandwich!

My PJs are on backwards!

My cuddle bunny is hogging the bed!

I'm scared of the light!"

At sundown, Boris's sleep-deprived mom and dad practically dress him and drag him off to school, where he falls asleep and dozes for most of the, er, night. He's a zombie all through P.E. In art he's too pooped to paint, and at lunch he uses his pizza for a pillow. He even catches forty winks on the floor, where his classmates use him for a wastebasket. He curls up in his cubby for a really long catnap. By early dawn, he's all caught up on his shuteye and ready for fun, but by then school is almost over.

"What did I miss?" he asks his classmates.

His cubmates have had a ton of fun and they hit the highlights for Boris, beginning with field day, er, night.

"We all got medals!

Oh. What else?

"Birthday cupcakes.

And class picture day!

Your chance to be Line Leader!"

Boris also missed the big Thanksgiving play about the Pilgrims and the Indians.

But in a way, he was the star. The napping Boris played Plymouth Rock.

"Oh," said Boris. "Hmmm."

Boris determines that from now on there'll be some changes made, in popular author Helen Lester's just published picture book, Boris and the Worrisome Wakies (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), with humorously illustrated winsome critters by the award-winning artist Lynn Munsinger, who skillfully uses sly sight gags and page placement, font changes, and curvy lines of type to make each page a standout. Bedtime problems can be no laughing matter for parents, but in the hands of these two expert storytellers, catching some Zs on schedule can be quite comic. This is one story not to sleep through!

Partnered with Munsinger, the award-winning Helen Lester has proven that she can make nearly-comatose critters funny, as she did in Score One for the Sloths (Laugh-Along Lessons), and together they have racked up many a classic comic tale, including Hooway for Wodney Wat. and sequels, Tacky the Penguin, and sequels, and Hurty Feelings.