The New Neighbors

by Sarah McIntyre

Overview

New neighbors have moved into the ground floor of a bustling apartment building. The bunnies upstairs are excited, but what will the other residents think? Sarah McIntyre's funny, light-hearted tale reveals there's no room for prejudice.

The bunnies upstairs are thrilled to find out that rats have moved into the first-floor apartment. But when other neighbors discover the news, excitement soon turns to jitters, panic, and worse! As the residents descend the stairs to investigate, the rats prepare a yummy dessert. Will all of the animals make the rats leave, or can fear be conquered with delicious, homemade cake?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524789961
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	02/26/2019
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	11.50(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.30(d)
Lexile:	540L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Sarah McIntyre is an award-winning author and illustrator originally from Seattle, Washington. Her books have received the Bishop's Stortford Picture Book Award, the UKLA Book Award, the Sheffield Children's Book Award, the Leeds Graphic Novel Award, and more.

Editorial Reviews

02/01/2019

PreS-Gr 2—When the bunnies of Pickle Lake apartments learn that rats have moved in downstairs, they set off on a rollicking trek down to greet them, gathering the rest of their animal neighbors along the way. McIntyre uses cumulative repetition and fun vocabulary to describe the movement of the animals as they hop and trot down the steps with increasing anxiety that rats are dirty and messy neighbors. The illustrations and arrangement of the text becomes increasingly crowded and chaotic, until reaching the unexpectedly tidy and welcoming apartment of the rats, Bertram and Natasha. The animals are depicted in vivid colors with expressive faces, and each character has a distinctive personality. The varied size and placement of text across the pages as well as the use of space and lines within the illustration serve to underpin the movement of the story. The cartoonish style uses saturated colors and contains humorous flourishes as the family of bunnies make mischief throughout the tale which culminates with an important lesson on making hasty generalizations about groups of people and animals. VERDICT The humor and fun vocabulary, as well as the engaging illustrations make this a storytime hit that may also be enjoyed independently.—Kelly Topita, Anne Arundel County Public Library, MD

School Library Journal