The Big Bad Wolf and Me

French artist Perret makes her American debut with this droll exposé, narrated by a boy who befriends a down-in-the-mouth Big Bad Wolf. Their conversations unfold over several chapters, in comics sequences, with four minimalist images to a page. Initially, the boy finds a morose, shadowy canine sitting against his house. "I'm not a dog. Leave me alone," says the glum silhouette, identifying himself as the storybook wolf. "Nobody believes in me anymore. I don't scare anyone." The boy, fittingly, invites the wolf to live in his bedroom closet and re-learn scary behavior. This unusual roommate subsists on cookies and gets insulted when the boy brings him canned food; he stuffily insists on being called Bernard, whereas the boy prefers to call him Zorro. The wolf grows more cheerful, and toothier, each time he manages to frighten his benefactor, and eventually returns to his bogeyman role. "I had to hand it to him. His hard work had really paid off," the pleased boy says. Perret draws the boy in a delicate blue line, and his words appear in a fine-grain typeface. She pictures the wolf as an inky scrawl with a prominent snout and a skinny gangster's slouch; he shifts his shape from rangy to menacing, and his speech comes out in bold, cartoonish type suited to his imaginary status. The exchanges between the energetic boy and wry wolf recall Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes , and Perret's lively line drawings and dialogue animate the buddy relationship. Ages 4-up. (Aug.)