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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.