Yeti, Turn Out the Light!

There’s nothing more frightening than a yeti—unless that yeti is frightened. This one is a homely fellow with red eyes, gray-blue fur, and snaggleteeth, and he’s snuggled in bed in his underground forest lair (where his rustic decor includes a birch-bark lampshade). He’d like to go to sleep, but he keeps seeing scary shadows—the kind with tendrils and claws that spill from wall to ceiling. Fortunately, the book’s page-turns always reveal them to have been cast by groups of harmless, liquid-eyed forest creatures who have come to visit: “On the light goes,/ and to Yeti’s surprise,/ he sees only bunnies,/ and their big bunny eyes.” Kirwan dials the visiting animals’ cuteness factor to the max, and her exuberantly colored spreads have the look of ’60s TV cartoons; the writers are the founders of GAMAGO, a West Coast design firm. The complex shadows correspond, more or less, to the strange postures the animals take—a terrifying Frankenstein’s monster shadow, for example, proves to be an owl sitting on a bear’s head with a teapot in its wing. It’s a cheerfully executed, laugh-out-loud exploration of fear and the dark. Ages 3–5. (Sept.)