The new neighbors by Sarah McIntyre

This cute book tries to defuse prejudice in a child-friendly way, but makes a few false steps. The news comes first from Mr. Pigeon on the roof - there are new neighbors! And they're rats! The bunnies have never lived with rats before and are excited... until they and their older sister, Lettuce, start talking to their other neighbors. Vern the sheep is worried that the rats might be messy. The pigs have heard that rats aren't just messy, they smell bad! Things get more and more scary, until the panicked animals meet their new neighbors - a very nice couple of rats who are clean, tidy, and have cake to share!

Cute cartoon illustrations and cheerful, onomatopoeic text show the animals' increasing panic until they realize all their fears were misplaced. I can see what the author was trying to do, and I think this is a perfectly fun book for storytime, but I see a couple problems with it and I don't know that it will really click with kids. First of all, kids are generally pretty literal. They're not going to connect an apartment of animals scared of a new animal with, say, immigrants from a new country moving into their neighborhood or a new kid in class with special needs. Second, there are some odd things in the book, most especially when Bertram the rat says he knows rats aren't everyone's idea of the best neighbors, so they baked some cake. That kind of implies that rats normally are smelly, messy, thieves and he had to reassure everyone? Not the best message for a book supposedly promoting not pre-judging people or being prejudiced.

Verdict: On the whole, it's a cute book and some older kids might find the humor amusing, especially when the pigs worry about the rats being messy, but it's not a necessary purchase in my opinion.

ISBN: 9781524789961; Published February 2019 by Penguin Workshop; Review copy provided by publisher; Donated to the library