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FRIENDS by Helme Heine

FRIENDS

By

Pub Date: Oct. 22nd, 1982
ISBN: 0689710836
Publisher: Atheneum

Heine, who made a splash of sorts with the waggish watercolors for the whimsical Pigs' Wedding (1979), shapes this flighty outing along a string of friendship adages: ""Good friends always stick together,"" as demonstrated when Charlie the rooster performs his morning chore and his friends Johnny Mouse and Fat Percy, a pig, go along. ""Good friends always decide things together,"" in this case to play pirates in an abandoned rowboat. ""Good friends are always fait,"" spoken a little ironically when wild cherries are divided, Percy gets twice as many, and Charlie, who complains, gets the pits as compensation. Finally, when it's time to go to bed, ""Sometimes good friends can't be together."" If the pictures amplified these turns on friendship, humorously or otherwise, it might be enough; but Heine's cartoons, however deftly painted, are vacant--without ideas, expression, or flow.