From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 1–Ben is a brave and loyal little brother. Sure, he uses Anna's makeup to paint red blobs on her desk. But really they're drops of blood from the man-eating monster standing behind her, fork in hand, sprinkling her hair with a soupçon of salt. He instructs her to hide inside her wardrobe and make monster noises (no giggling–this will inflame the creature) while he attacks the suddenly ferocious armoire with his plastic artillery. While Anna extricates herself from her vanquished furniture, Ben is battling the green bathroom slime, the weekly burglar, and the backyard bears. His strength and courage are distinguished by a trail of spilt and broken things left in the wake of his heroics. Yet when night sneaks in through the windows, Ben is up against the wildest monster of all and he is so very glad to have a sister to shelter him. Meyer's color-soaked cartoons are bursting with a zany energy in which fantasy becomes real. While the text is somewhat awkward, Meyer takes up the slack whenever the words falter. This is not so much the story of a small boy's daytime bravery and nighttime fears as it is the tender description of a special sibling relationship.
–Susan Weitz, formerly at Spencer-Van Etten School District, Spencer, NY Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
From Booklist
PreS-Gr. 2. The creators of
The Princess Knight (2004) and
Pirate Girl (2005) offer another picture book, this time featuring the adventures of contemporary kids close to home. "Sometimes when Ben wakes up he is a wild wolf. Or a knight." In short, deadpan sentences, Funke describes a boy's imagined games. Armed with toy swords and water pistols, he pretends to protect his older sister, Anna, from endless threats--monsters, burglars, and bears. But at night, when "the heating creaks like the sound of a thousand biting beetles," it's Anna who protects her frightened brother. Wright's wonderfully expressive acrylic paintings elevate this simple glimpse of sibling play into something special. The animated scenes, filled with Ben's imagined foes, perfectly capture the wild-eyed, physical fun; the shifting emotions as brother and sister tussle and tease; and finally, their comfort. For another sibling story, suggest LeUyen Pham's
Big Sister, Little Sister (2005) or Lynne Jonnell's
Let's Play Rough (2000).
Gillian EngbergCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
