EMBARRASSED FERRET

After a series of mishaps, Ferret finds her place at school.

In rhyming text with a singsong cadence, Riddiough recounts an anthropomorphic ferret’s fraught school day. All starts well as she walks to school “in style, / all silky fur and cheerful smile.” But then Ferret trips and falls when she enters the building, the first of several incidents that embarrass her as the day proceeds in a setting that feels like an updated Busytown Schoolhouse, complete with a Pride flag on the teacher’s desk. Slapstick humor in the Richard Scarry–esque illustrations invites readers’ laughter as one minor calamity follows another, with Tsurumi displaying an impressive command of perspective and characterization, but the story happily doesn’t involve other characters teasing or laughing at poor Ferret, who feels mighty uncomfortable and conspicuous nonetheless. Relief comes with others’ awkward moments, culminating with the line, “Ms. Bunny tried to get class started. Instead she accidentally…farted!” In a feat of perfect pacing, this last word falls after the page turn, the accompanying illustration showing a close-up of Ms. Bunny’s face in profile, wide-eyed with shock. An educator to her gassy, leporine core, Ms. Bunny quickly recovers and makes a teachable moment of her flatulence, saying, “All of us have things go wrong. / It doesn’t mean we don’t belong.”

Ferret out this one for storytimes about building community.