Worry-Warts, Unite! Sam the Most Scaredy-Cat Kid in the Whole World by Mo Willems

Sam was scared of anything and everything.

Really. The PLINK of a raindrop scares him stiff. A tiny spider scurries away out of Sam's sight, but he's still terrified. Even the Pigeon driving the school bus spots Sam and snarkily says SHEESH!

Sam is the world's biggest scaredy cat, all right. Everything frightens him....

Except for his friend Leonardo, the Terrible Monster.

Leonardo is a terrible monster, scarcely scarier than the raindrop, but he tries his best. Sam may be the biggest scaredy-cat known to man, but he's not afraid of Leonardo. (Nobody is, but still....) But it seems that Sam is not the ONLY scaredy-cat of note in the neighborhood.

One day Sam made a particularly scary discovery.

He and Leonardo meet up with a girl named Kerry and her feline monster named Frankenthaler. (Kerry was the second most scaredy-cat kid in the world.) Of course, Sam and Kerry are terrified.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!

Both of the kids hurl themselves to the ground and curl up, teeth chattering.

But strangely, Frankenthaler and Leonardo hit it off right from the start. Sam and Kerry, on the other hand, are scared spitless--but not of each other's monsters!

They are scared of strange KIDS! They are afraid of EACH OTHER.

But this time their monsters have had it with their scaredy-cat charges. Leonardo and Frankenthaler buddy up and head off, page right, for some fear-free fun on their own.

"FIGURE IT OUT!" SAYS LEONARDO.

It's time for some tough love from Sam and Kerry's mild-mannered monsters, in three-time Caldecott winner Mo Willems' latest, Sam, the Most Scaredy-cat Kid in the Whole World: A Leonardo, the Terrible Monster Companion (Hyperion Books, 2017). In this companion book to his hit, Leonardo, the Terrible Monster, Mo Willems doesn't abandon his cowardly kids, even slyly giving them a chance to join forces to turn the tables on their monsters. Overcoming fears of the unknown is a popular theme, and in this one Willems adopts the wide-open style of its companion title, using muted colors, spare text, and hand-lettering to good advantage to tell his tale of finding some social courage. "Visually and narratively, this story is a lovely bookend to Leonardo," says Publishers Weekly.

Mega-Monster! Rodzilla by Rob Sanders

WELCOME TO MEGALOPOLIS, the sign proclaims.

Megalopolis seems a bustling city of sturdy buildings, bustling trucks and cars, and busy pedestrians...

... but something is afoot!

"ONE MOMENT, PLEASE....

BIG, BAD TROUBLE IN MEGAPOLIS!"

With a WOBBLE and a CLUNK! a fleshy monster invades the cityscape. Gigantic, rotund, and wearing a tee shirt that says TOTALLY ROD, he lumbers, scattering the buildings like baby blocks and snatching up the people and the cars like toys in his pudgy paws, leaving a trail of destruction behind him.

And speaking of behind--what's that stinky smell?

ONLY A MOTHER COULD LOVE SUCH AN AWFUL CREATURE!

But it only gets worse. As the monster lumbers across the landscape, he cries out and clutches his considerable belly, and then.... without further warning...

HE HURLS... .

BLECK! It's a trail of disgusting devastation as Rodzilla totters on, squishing through the glop in his path. The massively messy monster wobbles through his slimy wake and, with people and the news crew retreating in fear, Rodzilla belly flops right in the middle of the morass!

"HE'S ON HIS FEET AGAIN!

THIS JUST IN! RODZILLA IS NOW CLIMBING UP SKYSCRAPER TOWER!"

Can Rodzilla be stopped? Is the city doomed? But...WAIT!

"I HAVE JUST GOTTEN WORD THAT TWO BRAVE CITIZENS HAVE COME FACE TO FACE WITH THE CREATURE!"

It's Mom and Dad, of course, rushing to restore law and order to the rampaged playroom, in Rob Sanders' and Dan Santat's tall tale of total toddler meltdown, their just published Rodzilla (Margaret K. Elderry Books, 2017).

Artist Santat provides all the cues for sharp-eyed readers to suss out the real identity of Rodzilla, as toddler Rodney trashes his own turf, the playpen. Santat's skilled manipulation of perspective, revealed in varying cinematographic angles, provides lots of clues, beginning with the author's name spelled out in alphabet blocks and the illustrator's name on an Etch-A-Sketch on the cover. Older primary students with tots at home will giggle and groan knowingly throughout the mayhem--the plentiful toddler drool, tot toots, baby barf, and smashed toys--and will rightfully see what true heroes parents can be. This one has plenty going on on every page to keep laughing kids coming back over and over for a re-read.

Things That Go Bump in the Night! Love Monster and the Scary Something by Rachel Bright

It's way past bedtime o'clock in Cutesville, and everyone was fast asleep.

Everyone, that is, except one particular monster.

Love Monster has had his nightly mug of hot cocoa, read himself a soothing bedtime story, several of them--fifteen and a half, to be exact.

But sleep won't come.

It's one of those nights. The more he tries to drift off to sleep, the wider awake he gets. Even the tick of the clock downstairs is too loud.

Then he hears another sound.

What was that?

At first it's just a slight rustling, maybe outside the house.

And then --

CReeeEEAAAaaacKKK!

Now it sounds like something downstairs!

BANG!

Then there's a new sound--something is coming up the stairs! Something with...

TWISTERLY TOENAILS!

YIKES! It's a a case of creeped out in Cutesville, in Rachel Bright's latest little monster story, Love Monster and the Scary Something (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), one that plays on all the night terrors that we all, from tots to seniors, share at one time or another, Bright makes good use of the coming-closer-and-closer trope, as her furry little Love Monster goes from hiding his head under his starry comforter to choosing to confront his scary something--a little bunny, a surprise partner in late-night insomnia.

It turns out that Love Monster wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep.

Rachel Bright's Love Monster is the cutest creaturely character since Mercer Mayer's shaggy Little Critter began his picture book career, and in this fourth book in her series, Bright's illustrations are just as monstrously adorable as ever in a story that makes the most of midnight suspense just right for the upcoming scary season, but a story which will also have kids cheering for her character's take-charge courage at the climax.

Other stories in this series are Love Monster, Love Monster and the Perfect Present, and Love Monster and the Last Chocolate.