By Cyrisse Jaffee

Have a laugh as you read these charmingly funny picture books with your child.

The Boo-Boos of Blueberry Elementary by Chelsea Lin Wallace. Illustrated by Alison Farrell. Chronicle, 2023.

Don’t Eat Bees (Life Lessons from Chip the Dog) by Dev Petty. Illustrated by Mike Boldt. Doubleday, 2022.

Don’t Trust Cats (Life Lessons from Chip the Dog) by Dev Petty. Illustrated by Mike Boldt. Doubleday, 2024.

Loose teeth, homesickness, sniffles, and splinters will all be familiar to elementary-school-aged children, and so will the hectic scene in the school nurse’s office in The Boo-Boos of Bluebell Elementary. Miss Peatree’s visitor log gets longer and longer as the day’s accidents and sicknesses mount up. Even Principal Pettycoat barges in with a paper cut. One by one, Miss Peatree provides comfort and assistance for each problem with ice packs, tissues, bandages, tweezers, and other tools of the trade. Finally, the day is over, and Miss Peatree rides home on her bicycle. There, her little dog greets her with joy. “After all,” the narrative explains, “we all need tending. Even those who do the mending.”

This is a sweet and reassuring story, showing kids (and grown-ups) of all ages and ethnicities. Kids will not only relate to the story, they may also find it helpful if they worry about what might happen if they don’t feel well at school. And what a lovely celebration of school nurses, who often work out of cramped spaces, deal with a range of issues, and are dedicated to their work. This read-aloud will also be useful for younger children as they learn about community and school helpers.

Chip, the self-important dog narrator of Don’t Eat Bees, is not the most reliable sage, but he’s got a lot of advice anyway. He is not fond of cats (“cats are awfully self-important for animals who poop in a box.”), and he can even do a little math. But what he really knows about is what you should and shouldn’t eat. For instance, do eat socks (“That is why they come in pairs! There’s a spare one just for you.”), but don’t eat bees. Do eat important papers (especially homework), but don’t eat bees. Do eat the Thanksgiving turkey, but … you get the idea. Younger kids will giggle as they watch Chip careen from one mishap to another, with his smart-aleck commentary. They may even guess the reason he is adamant about not eating bees, which is revealed toward the end of the book. And they’ll laugh out loud when he claims that he is such a smart dog that he believes it when Mittens the cat tells him “good things about cactuses.” Uh-oh, Chip!

Chip shares more of his dubious wisdom in the follow-up book, Don’t Trust Cats. Like the first one, the lively pictures and know-it-all dialogue will help kids catch on quickly that Chip’s mistrust of cats is misguided (as is his boasting about his own intelligence). He thinks a porcupine may make a better animal companion, and hard -to-catch birds and squirrels are “laughing with you, not at you.” People are definitely better than cats, Chip claims, even if they bring you to the vet instead of the park or cheat at cards (but keep treats in their pockets). Chip thinks that “your persons will be happy when you ‘do’ your business. They are so proud, they even collect it and put it in a protective wrapper.” Chip momentarily lets down his guard to trust Mittens, the cat, and then decides maybe cats aren’t so bad. “Besides,” he says, in a spread that shows him approaching a skunk with its tail up, “you never know when a cat will do something nice, like introducing you to some new friends!”

Both books rely on Boldt’s colorful, cartoonish illustrations that fill the pages with Chip’s goofiness and energy, plus the people and animals all around him. Although some of the vocabulary is sophisticated (“intuition,” “knowledge”), younger children will enjoy Chip’s antics, even if they need a little explanation now and again as you read the book aloud.

Cyrisse Jaffee is a former children’s and YA librarian, children’s book editor, and a creator of educational materials for WGBH. She holds a master’s degree in Library Science from Simmons College and lives in Newton, MA.