Meet the Neighbors! Douglas, You're a Genius! by Ged Adamson

Nancy and Douglas were playing ball in the backyard when Nancy hit one too hard. And of all the places it could have gone inside the fenced-in yard, the ball rolls straight through a small hole at the bottom of the fence.

"I'd say that one's a goner," said Doug.

But the ball came rolling back through the fence straight to them.

What? Who? How? Doug and Nancy have got to know!

"I have an idea!" said Doug.

Doug runs inside and comes out with a toy train and some track and soon sends the train rolling back under the fence with a note.

"THANK YOU! WE ARE NANCY AND DOUG."

And the train returns straightway, with a note.

"HOLA! QUIEREMOS CONOCERTE!"

Huh? What? How? Now Nancy and Doug have to solve the mystery. Nancy is full of plans for seeing who's on the other side of the fence. She tries getting Doug to jump on the toy trampoline and vault over the fence, but he only makes it onto the tree. She tries a rocket belt strapped to Doug's back with two shaken liters or soft drinks to propel him up and over.

The flight is a fizzle.

Poor Doug has to try pole vaulting.... and getting a lift from a floating kite... until at last Nancy is out of uplifting ideas.

Now it's Doug's turn. He starts digging a hole beside the fence. Nancy is pleased. He's making a tunnel under the fence. That could work....

But NO! That's not Doug's idea. The pile of excavated dirt grows until it is as tall as the fence, and with a mountain-climbing ax, Doug ascends to the peak and is able to peer over the fence at last.

"HOLA!"

"HELLO!"

There's a boy and his dog on the other side, and soon the two sets of gizmo inventors have devised a way to cross over the fence, in Ged Adamson's latest shaggy dog story, Douglas, You're a Genius! (Schwartz and Wade). Author-illustrator Adamson's humorous tale of bridging differences proves poet Robert Frost's famous quote, "Something there is that does not love a wall." There are quite enough Rube Goldberg contraptions and contrivances in both yards to suggest that the two kids and two dogs have plenty in common to share. Ged Adamson's first book about Nancy and her nearsighted shaggy dog Doug is Douglas, You Need Glasses! (read review here)

Booklist says, "...this amusing picture book also shows that goals can be reached cooperatively through planning, ingenuity, and goodwill.

There Goes the Neighborhood! The Neighbors by Einat Tsarfati

I live in a building that is seven stories high.

Every floor has a slightly different door.

Actually that's an understatement.

Each of the doors is wildly different--in strange ways.

The door on the first floor has five locks and a surveillance camera. Who would want to keep other people out badly enough to lock all those locks? The girl imagines a den of black-clad masked thieves living in an apartment filled with exotic loot--including the marble Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa, and King Tut's mummy.  Even the baby's tchotchke toys are enormous diamonds!

The second floor door always has animal tracks around the doormat. A tiger must live inside, with a former explorer,  in an indoor jungle of vines. The third floor has only a bike wheel, but the imaginative girl envisions a troop of acrobats rehearsing inside.

When I reach the fourth floor,
the light always shuts off...

The girl hurries past that landing. Could a family of vampires be tucked within their coffins inside? Yikes!

The fifth door smells like pickled fish.

She's sure a pirate must be living inside with his mermaid wife who has a taste for herring. Gross!

But the sixth floor door has musical rest symbols and wonderful music is to be heard coming from under that door.

At last she reaches her own plain Jane door on the seventh floor. It's a bore, a total snore!

Her apartment has ordinary furnishings, and her parents are, well, pedestrian. The only excitement going on there is the decor in her own room. She loves her parents, but... nothing to see there!

But there's a surprise ending for young readers with the final page turn. As the girl snoozes, perchance dreaming of exotic scenes, her parents are suiting up as caped crusaders, responding to a call for help from the red telephone and about to leap from their window into nightly escapades, in Einat Tsarfati's The Neighbors (Abrams Books, 2019). In this funny and fanciful tale, it seems that the girl indeed comes by her fantastical imaginings naturally. Tsarfati's lavish and humorously detailed illustrations are a delight to the eyes for young readers, with an ironic ending that is great fun. The girl's imaginings are wonderfully elegant and extensive, but the last laugh is the best when artist Tsarfati reveals what's been going on right under her nose in her own apartment.

Publishers Weekly praises this one, saying, "Tsarfati offers accomplished execution, sureness of line, and restrained, urbane humor." Kirkus concurs with "Delightfully ambiguous and recursive."