Stella and Charlie, Friends Forever

Five years after Stella Is a Star!, Peters's dancing dog returns, and she's lonely after the (presumed, off-screen) death of her friend Kramer, who appeared in Peters's Broadway Barks: "She just waited by the door for her friend to come back. But Kramer was not coming home." Determined to cheer up Stella, her human "mom," a Peters lookalike, drives from New York City to Texas and back to adopt Charlie, a scruffy brown dog "who was found in a garbage dumpster." Peters devotes several pages to the road trip that brings Charlie to New York City; while this recounting mirrors how Peters adopted the real-life Charlie, it's an odd narrative choice, since it means that the already lonely Stella (who disappears from the story as she's left at home) loses her caretaker for a significant portion of the book. Once Charlie arrives in New York, though, the two dogs soon become fast friends. The cozy mixed-media textures of Murphy's illustrations maintain an upbeat atmosphere, but as animal adoption and friendship stories go, this one has little to distinguish itself. Ages 3%E2%80%937. (Aug.)