No Changes! Anxious Charlie to the Rescue by Terry Milne

Charlie is nervous. After all, bad things COULD happen any day.

But Charlie's got it all figured out. He does everything the same way every day, and so far, everything is okay.

He hops on his hind legs when he gets out of bed.

Every day, Charlie walked once around the fire hydrant on his way to the market. And he always walked on the same side of the old oak tree.

Every night he arranges his toy animals in the same order before he goes to bed. And it must work--nothing bad has happened yet!

But one morning Charlie is startled out of sleep by his phone, ringing anxiously. There's no time for protective hops! Duck is on the line, quacking frantically.

Their friend Hans was stuck.

There's no time for protective routines. Charlie runs straight to the scene, where he finds his friends looking worried and only terrier Hans' rear end and tail sticking out of a long pipe. Charlie is the only one who can get into the pipe to help Hans.

And Charlie knows what to do!

Grabbing one of Duck's feathers in his mouth, he pushes his way down into the other end of the pipe.

Charlie tickled,

and Hans giggled.

And Poof! Hans exhales and POPs out of the pipe!

Charlie can't believe it. Something bad happened and he handled it!

On the way home, Charlie didn't think about which way he passed the oak tree.

Real life is just one long ad-lib, as the Charlie learns, in Terry Milne's funny tale of an obsessive-compulsive weiner dog, Anxious Charlie to the Rescue (Candlewick Press, 2018). Charlie is an adorable dachshund hero who discovers that a little improvisation in his life can be life-changing. All of author-illustrator's Milne's animal characters are charming--Bruce the droopy-jowled hound and Hans the ring-eyed bull terrier especially--done spot-art style on each page, along with a couple of double-page spreads, in which Charlie and all his toy animals snooze in abandon, spread-eagled all over the bed. Solid storytelling and delightfully funny illustrations make this one a lighthearted look at OCD that might nudge some young worrywarts out of their routines.