Pinch and Dash and the Terrible Couch by Michael J. Daley (review)

Pinch’s quiet afternoon is rudely interrupted when two movers (aptly named Push and Shove) show up with a couch to deliver and proceed to steadfastly ignore Pinch’s protests that he doesn’t want the couch, instead shoving furniture around until they’ve stuffed the thing willy-nilly into Pinch’s small living room. The couch is in fact the property of Pinch’s flighty aunt, who is between houses and needs to store it somewhere. Poor Pinch is despondent (“‘She will forget about this couch,’ Pinch said. ‘I will never sit in my snug chair again’”), but his pal Dash shows up and cheerily swings into interior-design action, trying to rearrange the furniture to fit the supersized sofa. All that work tires Dash out and he ends up snoozing on the sofa. It is then that Pinch sees a solution: move the couch to Dash’s house, which Push and Shove ably do, with a sleeping Dash still atop it. This second installment in the Pinch and Dash series further solidifies the pair’s humorously complementary characters. As in the first volume, simple vocabulary, short sentences, and repeated words and phrases all work harmoniously to support novice readers. Pinch and Dash are likable fellows, in much the same vein as Frog and Toad and other classic friendship duos—even if we’re not entirely sure what kind of animals they are. Yezerski’s loose lines, filled in with skillfully applied watercolor, give this a casual, approachable feel, and the garish red-orange print of the couch contrasts amusingly with the more sedate colors of Pinch’s décor. The couch may be terrible, but the book is a charmer.