Brave as Can Be: A Book of Courage

Throughout the large, sturdy, die-cut pages, a little girl talks about her fears and how she copes with them. Following In My Heart (2015), Witek and Roussey have again produced text and art that deal with children's emotions without sentiment, condescension, or oversimplification--and with humor. The pen-drawn girl gazes at a greenish mound that spills over the gutter to where she stands on the verso as she confesses, "When I was little, I was afraid of everything! Little creaks and squeaks and booming thunderclaps. Teeny creepy-crawlies and monstrous, pointy fangs. I had a pile of fears as big as a mountain." The next double-page spread, sporting a comical, blue-furred, monster-ish being, describes the icy feeling that often accompanies fear; its yawning mouth is a circular cutout that leads to the next spread. On it, the girl mentions fear of the dark, this time also explaining what helps her: "a bright night-light and my superpowered pajamas, which are 100 percent danger-proof." On each successive double-page spread, the girl describes one fear and then explains her coping mechanism, always aided by enormously amusing art, plus the bonus of punched-out holes. There's even a child-friendly version of the imagine-your-audience-nude advice sometimes given to timorous adults, as the girl imagines her angry teacher as an owl: "Imagining her feathers makes me feel brave." The book also affirms the fact that sometimes it's fun to scare and be scared, as at Halloween. Thoroughly entertaining and probably useful. (Picture book. 3-7)

Copyright 2015 Kirkus Reviews, LLC Used with permission.

Following appearances in Hello in There! (about expecting a new sibling) and In My Heart (about emotions), Witek and Roussey's heroine returns in a book about fear. Drawn in pencil and accented with bright red cheeks and a polka-dot frock, the girl describes how she overcame each of her fears, which are personified as large, scribbly monsters embellished with die-cut holes--a row of pointy triangles serves as teeth for both an anthropomorphic night sky, reflecting her fear of the dark, and a noisy neighbor's dog, which is pictured as large as a field. The girl's upbeat self-assurance, as she defangs each conquered fear (singing a song during a thunderstorm or imagining a strict, angry teacher as a feathery owl) may help readers put their own fears in perspective and give them tools to face them head-on. Ages 2-4. (Sept.)

A girl remembers how once she "was afraid of everything!" Now she has coping skills: holding Mom's hand when dogs bark, realizing she had a nightmare. Now she can listen to Dad's spooky story and reassure her little sister when she is afraid. Clean line art pairs with scribbly childlike drawings on thick cardstock; many of the book's die-cuts don't enhance page turns.

Copyright 2016 Hornbook, LLC Used with permission.