It Came Out of the Sky! BOOM! by Mary Lynn Ray

ROSIE WAS A SMALL DOG WHO WAS USUALLY VERY BRAVE...

Her boy is very brave, and with him around it's easy for Rosie to be unafraid.

She's just a pup, but the local cats don't scare her.

She's not afraid of tigers either.  She knows tigers don't live in her neighborhood. (Her boy told her that.)

The big-footed garbage man doesn't frighten her with his rattly-bang cans and grrr-owling truck. Passing fire trucks with screaming sirens aren't scary.  Even the vacuum cleaner holds no terrors for the valiant Rosie.

Rosie was proud of her courage--until something comes from an unsuspected source of danger.

BOOM!   
CRACK!

It came out of the sky and the flash seemed to come right in through the window.  Lightning!  Thunder! Lots of thunder!

Rosie is scared! Where's her boy? Where can they be safe?

Author Mary Lynn Ray takes on a common fear, thunderstorms that seem to shake the whole world, in her latest, BOOM!: Big, Big Thunder & One Small Dog (Hyperion, 2013).  Rosie's experience with a storm parallels that of many youngsters, a phenomenon that comes out of the sky, suddenly.  Luckily, Rosie's boy knows where to go and what to do, and cuddled in the middle of his bed, she finds that the storm is not so scary.  Steven Salerno's illustrations tell the tale, with his little pooch's expressive ears conveying Rosie's every emotion, while his cozy, small-town setting provides a reassuring backdrop for Rosie's first scary experience, shown in arresting page layouts in which the boom and crack of the thunderstorm seem to fill Rosie's world.  This one is  good bit of bibliotherapy for storm phobic youngsters to pair with Jamie A. Swenson's comic look at thunderboomers shared by a boy and his many pets, Boom! Boom! Boom! (see my recent review here).