Book excerpt: Using simple text and cartoon-style illustrations, Charise Mericle Harper introduces young readers to a new graphic novel series, Bean Dog and Nugget.These two engaging characters capture young kids' actions, reactions, conversations, imagination, and humor with spot-on accuracy. Kids will want to follow Bean Dog and Nugget and their adventures in each and every book in the series. In The Cookie, book two in this series, Bean Dog and Nugget argue about who will get the bigger half of a cookie. They try to outwit each other by all sorts of imaginative means--but they find out that what really counts in the end is friendship.