Always Room?...: Boom! Boom! Boom! by Jamie A Swenson

ONE STORMY NIGHT I JUMPED INTO BED,

SAFE WITH A BOOK AND MY TEDDY BEAR FRED.

Our little bedtime boy is fine with snuggling in his comfy bed and listening to the thunderboomer pass over. But soon it seems that he's the only one who's not frightened  by the storm.

FLASH! CRASH!....  "AROOOO!"

The boy's pup runs and jumps into his bed. Fine. Room for two, plus Fred!

Then there is a plaintive yowl from somewhere, and Kitty makes the transition, leaping into the now less roomy bed. Move over, Fred.

Kitty is soon followed by a guinea pig squealing "FEE  FEE!" and a frog with a nervous "RIBBET!"  Another flash and crash brings a parrot and a snake, squawking and hissing.

"AT LEAST YOU'RE THIN," THE BOY SAYS TO THE SNAKE.

Still, it's getting sorta snug in the boy's little bed, what with that snake coiled around them and all.

And then another boom of thunder brings...Sis, who streaks into the room and vaults right into the midst of it all ... with the inevitable results. With a creak and and a crash, the bed collapses, and all the interlopers flee, perhaps for Sis's still intact bed! Ah! Peace!

Jamie Swenson's Boom! Boom! Boom! (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2013) plays with the basic premise of the old folktale, Always Room for One More, reworked with great good humor in John Burningham's Mr. Gumpy's Outing and retold most notably in Audrey and Don Woods' Caldecott-winning The Napping House. Swenson's story has less literary pizazz but does have a pleasant rhyming text which takes on the issue of storm phobia, albeit with a main character for whom the thunder and lightning are the least of his worries.

Beddy-Bye Buddy: Kiki's Blankie by Janie Bynum

Kiki adores her polka-dot blankie.

She never goes anywhere without it.

Kiki is an adorable and determined little monkey who is 100% blankie bound. Not that she simply drags it around like Linus, sucking her thumb, totally zoned out. Not this girl! Kiki is a very active and imaginative blankie buff. Her blankie becomes a backyard tent, a tablecloth, and a nifty napkin. The complete source of her couture, Kiki nixes the nice frocks her mom proffers, and artfully fashions her outfits out of the polka-dot fabric.

But practical purposes are just the beginning of Kiki's creative use of her blankie. When she's a cowgirl outlaw, it becomes her neckerchief mask. When she's a pirate, it becomes her headdress, and when she's a sailor, it's the sail for her round tub ship. And when Kiki is a superhero, of course, it is her cape!

But when a wayward wind snatches her blankie away and sends it flapping onto a high tree branch, Kiki runs into a snag as well. Resting malevolently beneath the tree where the beloved blankie is marooned is a toothy crocodile!

Not to worry! Our girl is nothing if not resourceful. Her fertile imagination comes up with several clever ruses--disguising herself as a ghost, flying over the tree to snatch the blankie--but then she realizes that to do those things, she has to have her special blankie.

But then, Kiki's imagination calls up the image of the croc chowing down on her beloved blankie, and she sees that it is up to her to save her blankie. Climbing a nearby bamboo stalk to the tippy-top, Kiki leans way out, bending the top down, down, down, until she can just reach the blankie still flapping in the breeze.

Back home, both Kiki and her blankie need a bath. But bedtime can't come until the blankie is dry, so Kiki falls asleep waiting patiently in front of the dryer for her blankie to emerge. After all,

She never goes anywhere without her blankie.

Even in her dreams.

Janie Bynum's charming little character, front and center in bold colors against a bright white background, makes her brand-new Kiki's Blankie (Sterling, 2009) a sure-fire bedtime treat for preschoolers who know what a favorite blanket can do!