Nothing Scares Us

Together, Lucy and her best friend, Lenny, feel fierce. They invent games about pirates, snakes and aliens. But when Lenny watches a TV show about a three-eyed green monster, he doesn't notice the uneasy frown on Lucy's face. Later, Lucy imagines ""the creature"" outside her bedroom window and nervously pictures Lenny mocking her wimpy behavior (""What if he laughed?... Maybe she could say she was sick [to avoid the scary show]""). Lucy keeps a stoic silence until Lenny screams and recoils from a little spider, which she easily tosses out the nearest window. Wishinsky (Oonga Boonga) suggests that the friends regain their invincibility through teamwork; bad things happen only when one of them doesn't watch out for the other. Layton (Smile If You're Human) draws in a crayony scrawl and colors outside the lines. His childlike technique lets him enlarge important details, like the smiling brown spider that scares Lenny, and he conceives the TV monster as an amorphous, eight-armed blob. Wishinsky stresses togetherness and suggests that everyone has different fears, while Layton's na ve style leaves the frightening material to the imagination. This book injects a hefty dose of humor into a common childhood anxiety. Ages 5-8. (Oct.)