WHAT'S THAT NOISE?

In this sophisticated but rather chilly presentation, a boy with gleaming blue eyes and closely cropped black hair is awakened one night by a strange noise, rendered visually as a thin, smokelike ribbon of letters, which flies through his bedroom like an angry hornet. "What's that noise?" the boy says. Newcomer Carman follows the narrator as he thinks about what its source might be. He looks out the window at a Maxfield Parrish–like portrait of a suburban neighborhood. After imagining the strange sound emanating from a lawn mower and from a UFO, he wonders, as he puts his hand on the doorknob, "Could there be a monster in my closet?" In the next spread, a monster with five eyes, broken teeth and a snake-sharp tongue leers out of the closet at him. The artist cushions the horrors of the boy's fantasies with soft, slightly smudged renderings in black-and-white pastel, while crisp, hard-edged paintings tinted an eerie blue depict the boy's night-time reality. "It sounds like a bear in Mom and Dad's bedroom," the boy decides. The specter of a colossal polar bear looming over his parents' bed does not deter him. He draws himself up ("I've got to warn them") and the source of the noise is finally revealed (it's Dad, snoring). The haunting illustrations and cool atmosphere may be off-putting for some readers, but the technical skill and careful pacing of this picture book joke may well fulfill readers' expectations. Ages 5-8. (July)