LOTTIE'S NEW FRIEND

Although it appears to Herbie the duck that he’s been displaced in the affections of his sidekick Lottie (Lottie’s New Beach Towel, 1998) by Dodo, a new neighbor with an exotic accent, he needn’t fret. Dodo assures him in the end “zat you are ze apple of her eye.” Tall, mauve, elaborately crested, Dodo looks intimidatingly elegant next to Herbie’s dumpy figure in Mathers’ small, delicate paintings, but she puts on no airs, and the newly-minted trio of friends is last seen motoring companionably off to a meal of meatloaf and gingersnaps. A brief, understated take on a common worry—not confined to childhood—with enlivening touches of wit and charm. (Picture book. 6-9)