Respected raconteur Hayes (La Llorona, The Weeping Woman) offers a forewarning in the guise of a potentially scary story featuring a familiar figure in the folklore of the American Southwest. His easygoing, bilingual narrative first introduces el Cucuy, a gigantic bogeyman with a crooked back and a large, glowing red ear who is known to come "down from his cave in the mountains to carry bad children away." Readers then meet two lazy sisters who play all day and refuse to help their younger sibling clean house and cook for their widowed father. After warning the delinquent duo that he is going to call the bogeyman on them, the father makes good on his threat and the ominous creature snatches the girls from the dinner table and brings them into the deepest part of his spider-filled cave. Robledo's shadowy, stylized paintings with background shadings reminiscent of El Greco's works capture the terror of the wide-eyed sisters. Their captivity allows them time to reflect on the error of their ways; and when a goatherd rescues them, they discover that their father and sister were searching for them. Youngest readers may be put off by some of the book's gloomier images, despite the happy ending. But most will appreciate this chilling cautionary tale, best enjoyed during the daylight hours. Ages 9-12. (May)
