It’s exactly a year after the mixed woodland cohabitation celebrated in The Meeting (2010), and temperamental Ginger Fox has settled in nicely with her three new badger half-sibs—explaining after an exchange of insults (“Fly doody!” “Skunk fart!”) that arguing with friends is OK, but “you can argue much better with a brother. It’s natural!” Ginger’s equanimity is upset, however, first when her roving birth father pays a visit that reminds her how much parental attention she got when she was an only child, and then when two cats from town take over the tree-trunk clubhouse she and the badgers have fixed up. Despite an overt socialization agenda (“I have so many parents!” Ginger exclaims at the end), there are some amusing twists here—“Every fight you avoid is one you win,” homilizes Ginger’s strict and orderly badger dad, just before helping the young folk set up a paint trap to drive off the feline interlopers—and Tharlet’s delicately detailed panels never look crowded despite plenty of speech balloons. Above-average fare for younger graphic-fiction fans. (Graphic animal fantasy. 7-9)
