Mac & Cheese

K-Gr 2—Best friends Mac (a tall, thin, bespectacled piece of pasta) and Cheese (a small orange square of cheddar, perhaps) are spending a day together. On a long walk after breakfast, Cheese asks his brilliant friend a series of challenging questions and is impressed by Mac's knowledge. After lunch, Mac becomes indignant over perceived discrepancies in several paintings that Cheese has created. Cheese uses this opportunity to teach Mac that art can be produced and interpreted in many ways. After dinner, their peaceful evening gazing at the stars is interrupted by the arguing of Oil and Water. Mac and Cheese decide to return to their respective homes, where each contentedly dreams of the other. Broken up into three short stories named after the three meals of the day, this full-size picture book is formatted much like the easy readers of Arnold Lobel and James Marshall. The premises of the tales can be a little zany, yet these are amusing and timeless stories of friendship. The cartoon illustrations, rendered with brush pen on paper and colored in Sketchbook Pro, are bold and engaging. The deeply colored pictures give readers further insight into what is going on in the narrative.