Boo! Where's My Mummy? by Carolyn Crimi

On a deep, dark night in a deep dark place, Little Baby Mummy did not want to go to bed!

"Just one more game of Hide and Shriek," he pleaded with Big Mama Mummy. "Count your bandages while I hide!"

But Little Baby Mummy has no intentions of hiding anywhere Big Mama Mummy might find him and put him to bed. He's off into the deep, dark nighttime graveyard. But soon, he realizes that he's all alone. "Mama Mummy, where are you?" he calls plaintively, looking over gravestones and under tombs. Tromping into the "spookery woods," he hears a frightful sound.

Clank, clink, clank woo hoo!

It's BONES, a skeleton caught brushing his big clickety clack teeth, who has one wise warning for Little Baby Mummy:

"Little Baby Mummy, GO TO BED! There are creatures that bite in the deep, dark night!"

But with an insouciant "I'm not scared," Little Baby Mummy tromps on into the deep, dark night, where he meets up with Glob who warns him of the dangers of the swamp, and Drac, who greets him from his deep, dark cave. "You're not my mummy!" asserts Little Baby Mummy.

"Little Baby Mummy," Drac says, flapping his flappy, floppy wings, "Go to bed. There are creatures that swoop in the deep, dark night."

Little Baby Mummy may not be scared of THESE residents of the night, but there is one nocturnal creature which goes rustle, rustle, SCRITCH SCRITCH scary enough to send Little Baby Mummy scuttling back to Big Mama Mummy on the double, just in time to be re-wrapped nice and tight, all scrubbed and brushed like a proper little mummy, just in time for bed.

Where's My Mummy?, Crimi's not-too-scary story of an appealing little bedtime truant, benefits beautifully from John Mander's illustrations of his funny-spooky creatures of the night, especially Drac the Vampire, interrupted in his evening toilette with washcloth and Q-Tips at the ready, impatiently dealing with the impertinent toddler as best he can. It's a humorous little adventure with a not-too-surprising conclusion, ending as all such stories should, with a motherly hug and a loving bedtime kiss for the intrepid young wanderer.