MAX & RUBY'S BEDTIME BOOK

This short-story collection from the steady hand of Wells displays the mischievous sweetness of the Max and Ruby stories with their candy-heart coloring, but each could have used a few more pages to bring the stories fully around. The first of the three bedtime stories delivered by Grandma finds Max getting handed, as is his destiny, the raw end of the stick from Ruby when she and her friend Louise open a café: Max gets to be the dishwasher. Max’s ascent to chefdom, by associating chocolate mousse with baby shampoo, will fly over lots of little heads. In the second tale, Max, who can’t swim, jumps into the lake—with safety tube, yes—to rescue a friend’s doll. Fear may give sudden instincts of skill, but Max doesn’t look wracked by fear, just his standard willfulness. The final story has Max refusing to get out of his airplane to go to playschool, so he just goes to school in the plane. Fun as the stories may be, they miss the inspired twists that make Max such an artful dodger. (Picture book. 3-5)