Yeti, Turn Out the Light‪!‬

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 22 JULY 2013

There's nothing more frightening than a yeti unless that yeti is frightened. This one is a homely fellow with red eyes, gray-blue fur, and snaggleteeth, and he's snuggled in bed in his underground forest lair (where his rustic decor includes a birch-bark lampshade). He'd like to go to sleep, but he keeps seeing scary shadows the kind with tendrils and claws that spill from wall to ceiling. Fortunately, the book's page-turns always reveal them to have been cast by groups of harmless, liquid-eyed forest creatures who have come to visit: "On the light goes,/ and to Yeti's surprise,/ he sees only bunnies,/ and their big bunny eyes." Kirwan dials the visiting animals' cuteness factor to the max, and her exuberantly colored spreads have the look of '60s TV cartoons; the writers are the founders of GAMAGO, a West Coast design firm. The complex shadows correspond, more or less, to the strange postures the animals take a terrifying Frankenstein's monster shadow, for example, proves to be an owl sitting on a bear's head with a teapot in its wing. It's a cheerfully executed, laugh-out-loud exploration of fear and the dark. Ages 3 5.