“Not in my forest,” says Detective Gordon, determined to find the culprit behind incidences of bullying, teasing, and exclusion that are leaving animals sad and upset. Detective Gordon, an aging toad, is finding it more and more exhausting to do field work. Luckily, his assistant, Buffy, is a young, spry mouse. It takes careful questioning, and eventually intervention, to get at the root of what’s happening and make everyone happy. There are already many rules in the forest about the way animals can treat one another. Nonetheless, the two write one new rule—“Everyone should always be able to play with everybody.” And Buffy summarizes the other rules simply: “When you do something, and you’re happy afterwards, then it’s allowed ... When you do something, and you’re a little sad thinking about it afterwards, that’s often forbidden.” As in this duo’s debut, The First Case, the warmth between them is lovely and genuine in a beautifully designed and illustrated work of easy fiction that also has wonderful moments of humor, from gentle to laugh-out-loud. (Ages 4–8)