A light and engaging early reader with a simple but engaging plot. April and Mae are serving up representation, emotional learning, and lots of fun. Excited to see the rest of this charming series.

A charming and sweet story of friendship with excellent lessons. The engaging pictures make it great for early readers just graduating from picture books. My 6-year old Mae absolutely loved it and rated it 1,000 stars.

Thank you, Charlesbridge, for the advance reading copy.

This is such a delightful colourful read witha dash of playful words!

The story will tell the young readers it's okay to be friends with someone who's different from us. And even pets can be our best friends too!

I really, really love the characters! I appreciate the multicultural representation.

The colourful amazing illustrations makes this book more wholesome I would say.

I am planning to get all the books.in this series. Such a good collection it will be!

A story about the friendship of 2 young girls, April & Mea together with their pets. A good book to read to the early years kids for their IPC topic which is friendship. It is a straightforward book, but I love the mixed feelings that have been introduced in this book. They can feel angry, sad, and lonely also how and what they do to fix the broken relationship.

April and Mae are two best friends whose pets, a dog and cat, are best friends too. A mishap at a tea party causes them to fight. Eventually, and with some help from their animal friends, April and Mae take responsibility for their parts in the fight and make amends. The text is simple and well spaced on the page for beginning readers. This would be a good read-alike for Ling and Ting or Henry and Mudge.

April and Mae are two girls who are friends but are quite different. They deal with typical elementary type disagreements such as deciding on an activity and breaking a treasured belonging. Young readers in the age 5-7 range will relate to these characters for sure.

One thing I'm not sold on about this book is that it is being called a beginning chapter book, and I wouldn't necessarily call it that. As a grade 3 teacher, I see many kids reading beginning chapter books and they would be a bit annoyed if I handed them this. While it may "look" like a chapter book, there aren't any chapters (this is a big deal to 8 year olds). The writing is in large font, and simple sentences, which is great for early readers, but it does not really look like a chapter book, other than maybe number and size of pages. The text is made up of mainly decodable words and sight words and I think it would be accessible for children in about grade 1. I think this would be a great book for those students who are becoming a bit bored with simple leveled picture books and want to see themselves as a reader of longer books, but I would be hesitant to call it an early chapter book or recommend it to students above grade 2.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book!