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Making a Friend

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Making a Friend 
By Tammi Sauer
Illustrated by Alison Friend
Harper, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2018. Picture Book.

I wanted to share another new winter picture book—one that is quickly becoming one of my all-time-favorite books on friendship. In this book Beaver wants a friend. He tries to yell good morning to an owl—who he wakes up. He tries to give a bunch of balloons to a porcupine—which gets popped. He tries to give a bunch of flowers to a skunk—who takes offense. Basically Beaver is just no good at making a friend. Finally he decides to literally make a friend, by making a snowman. Along comes Raccoon who is also no-good at making friends—so the two of them make the snowman together. Alas once the snow-friend is made, the friend turns out to be “cold” by not playing or talking with them. Both Beaver and Raccoon are sad and dejected…until they both realize that perhaps they did make a friend after all. This is a fun story with quite a few clever moments (both in fun text and hilarious expressions with Beaver and Raccoon’s faces—especially how their little eyeballs look). And basically, this is a good winter book to read to or with a friend. Splendid.
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