THE BUSIEST STREET IN TOWN

The end papers indicate that the now–gray-haired Agatha May Walker and Eulalie Scruggs have been best friends from childhood, living across the street from each other on heavily trafficked Rushmore Boulevard. When Agatha decides to take her wing chair and her homemade cookies and sit in the middle of the street, Eulalie brings a Parcheesi board and a stool to join her. Soon drivers want to play and a neighbor stops by for a cookie. Children begin to play hopscotch and skateboard and make chalk drawings. The Rosado twins have their birthday party, locals play music and plant flowers—and the city renames the street (sans traffic) Walker Road. Eulalie and Agatha are brown and pink, respectively, and wear their best hats and pumps. McMenemy’s bright-hued watercolors tell the tale with simplicity—button eyes, comma noses, flat perspective on white ground. This civil-disobedience fable may cause streetwise readers both young and older to scratch their heads: Can two old ladies in heels really turn their street into a pedestrian mall? (Picture book. 5-8)