Benny and Penny in Lights Out! (Toon Books Level 2)

K-Gr 2--These mice siblings have very different approaches to bedtime. While Penny is following her mother's directions, brushing her teeth and settling into bed to read a story, Benny is too busy for such routines. When he looks out the window and cannot see the moon, he decides that pirates must have stolen it. After attempting to scare Penny with tales of the Boogey Mouse and dinosaurs, he decides that he might just go to bed after all. He realizes, however, that he has left his beloved pirate hat in the spooky playhouse, and he enlists Penny to help him retrieve it. Containing all of the classic problems that children sharing a bedroom face, this charming graphic novel is certain to delight Benny and Penny fans and find some new ones as well. Hayes's signature illustrations evoke dusk and evening time with the outdoor panels employing blues, purples, and grays while the indoor panels shine with bright yellow as if from a night-light. The mixture of sequential art and full-page panels adds to the movement of the story and will help early readers get a sense of its pacing. A fun addition to graphic-novel and bedtime-book collections.--Stacy Dillon, LREI, New York City