Platypus Police Squad: The Frog Who Croaked
A veteran police officer with a family and a weight problem pairs up with a rough-edged rookie whose procedural bloopers get them kicked off their first investigation&#x2014;so they nab the pusher they had been after on their own time. Sound familiar? Evidently hoping that young readers might find it clever, Krosoczka takes this rather trite plotline and positively festoons it with standard cop TV show lines and tropes. It helps that the duo are platypuses, but this does not have the sense of fun found in Krosoczka&#x2019;s Lunch Lady series (soon to be a major motion picture) and is way more confusing. Not even the dozens of cartoon illustrations (not seen in finished form) and an inviting all-animal cast featuring platypus cops carrying boomerangs instead of guns add  that much. Still, the author has a huge fan following, and patrons may request this. Hints of malfeasance in high places set up a next episode, so there will be more. Grades 4-7. --John Peters