STORMY NIGHT

While many young children like a good scare, the series of menacing images in this picture book stray beyond the bounds of spooky fare. "If the windows shake and rattle,/ And the shadows prowl the walls,/ …/ That's the time to think of me,/ And all will be well." As a series of rhythmic verses address many things that go bump in the night, sending toddlers scuttling to their mothers, the accompanying artwork serves up a veritable smorgasbord of frights, all rendered in a palette as dark and threatening as a thunderstorm. Each turn of the page reveals a fresh horror haunting a wide-eyed lad cowering in his bed, from billowing, ghostlike curtains to clawlike shadows so eerie that even the stuffed toys on the dresser shrink back in fear. While some of the illustrations clearly delineate the line between imagination and reality—a "giant twisting snake" that's actually a vacuum cleaner hose, for instance—others are much more ambiguous, particularly one chilling attic scene in which a dressmaker's dummy casts a crucifix-like shadow onto a ghostlike mound of sheets. The final illustration offers the only reassuring image in the entire book—in a glow of warm yellow light, a mother reaches out to gather her thoroughly spooked boy into her arms. But it scarcely offsets the mounting anxiety that will likely be triggered by the preceding pages. Ages 4-6. (Aug.)