Written and illustrated by Bob Shea
$16.99, ages 3-6, 40 pages
Shark doesn't have a nervous bone (er, piece of cartilage) in his body, but could there be one teeny tiny thing that rattles him?
Get ready for giggles. Shea is back with another fun read-aloud, this time about a big-talking shark who tries to convince a little fish and crab that nothing can scare him.
Without wasting a page, Shark swims up to readers on the first spread, catches their eyes like a happy emoticon and declares: 1) He's a shark and 2) He's totally awesome.
After all, he is big and broad. And just look at that pointy-tooth grin.
Nothing gets to this guy -- so he says:
Not allergy shots. (No, that's not a tear dripping down his right eye. Just seasonal allergies.)
Not scary movies. (No, he isn't hiding behind his bucket of popcorn. It so happens he likes to hold it in front of his face.)
Not dinosaurs. (Even if they were still around.)
But how about a big squid, the dark or a bear? ask his little friends.
Not even those things, Shark says. In fact, once those things know what kind of creature he is, they cower and gasp.
"Oh my goodness! A totally awesome shark!" yells the dark (a page all in black) in big white letters.
But suppose one of these things was disguised as a spider or was thinking about a spider or was reading a book about spiders?
You know, the creepy ones?
Well...
Okay, so Shark isn't keen on spiders. But don't believe what the fish and crab are saying.
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By C.K. Williams
Illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska
$16.99, ages 4-8, 32 pages
A boy stares down his biggest fear in the forest by refusing to believe it's real, in this clever, remarkable book.
With subtle, artful cues, award winners Williams and Swiatkowska show readers that if they choose not to be afraid of monsters, none can ever get to them.
Once upon a time, despite all of the scary things he'd heard about the forest, a boy decided to walk through it, though we don't know exactly why.
Maybe he was on an errand or he lived nearby or he just wanted to go from here to there. But it didn't really matter because there he was.
He was in the very place everyone said had big, dark trees that block sunlight and cliffs that he could fall off.
You know, a regular, ordinary forest where there are probably bears who growl and wolves who howl.
And how does everyone know this? "Because if you listened very hard you could almost hear them," Williams writes.
And don't forget big snakes that slither right next to where people walk.
For a scary forest, it was pretty typical, except for the fact that it also had a monster. At least that's what people said.
They said the monster was huge and it was green…or was it blue?
"Or maybe it changed colors. It had long, sharp claws, for another thing," Williams writes, and big teeth, fangs, and a prickly tall so much bigger than a porcupine's.
And, of course, its favorite thing to do was scare little children. Really scare them.
But the boy wasn't like many people. He didn't believe any of it. Well, most of it he didn't believe.
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