Goodnight goon A petrifying parody

Gr 1-3-Imitation can indeed be sincere flattery, as Rex proves in his slightly eerie reworking of Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd's classic bedtime tale. The young bunny has been replaced by a little monster, but he still wears striped pajamas as he lies in his bed and says good night to his surroundings. "In the cold gray tomb/There was a gravestone/And a black lagoon/And a picture of-Martians taking over the moon." The parody is clever, matching original verse with rhymes that seem unforced and appropriate for the new setting: "Goodnight skull/And goodnight shoe/Goodnight creature/Goodnight goo/And goodnight to the old werewolf hollering 'Boo.'" Rex's color drawings create a monster child's bedroom filled with the same late-evening light of Hurd's illustrations. The book ends on the same peaceful note as the original. A clever offering just right for graduates of bedtimes with Goodnight Moon.-Kathleen Whalin, York Public Library, ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

"In the cold gray tomb / There was a gravestone / And a black lagoon / And a picture of-- / Martians taking over the moon," begins this snort-inducing parody of one of children's literature's most sacred texts. Rex replicates the scansion and composition to a T, placing a befanged young werewolf in a green-blanketed bed under a picture of "three little mummies rubbing their tummies" and watched over by "a hairy old werewolf who was hollering 'Boo.' " It's something of a one-joke wonder, but what fun it is, as the goon wreaks a little havoc before being ordered under the bed by the stern little werewolf: "Goodnight monsters everywhere." (Picture book. 7 & up) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.