Cómo cazar fantasmas

PreS-Gr 2—Finn is being stalked. Every single night a grisly ghost makes sleep impossible. With claws and gnarly teeth, the persistent puce-eyed phantom haunts the boy and his teddy to the point of bone-quaking terror. Should he "sob, blubber, and bellow?" No! He's a warrior, a fighter pilot, an astronaut, a fierce pirate, a lion tamer, and a deep-sea diver—nothing scares him. He'll deal with this spooky specter himself. He grabs his handy-dandy book of spells and begins casting anti-ghostie incantations. Is that eerily pale ectoplasm bringing on the shivers? POOF—it's rainbow-striped and bedazzled. Sharp claws? SHAZAM—now they're spongy-soft angora mittens. The all-out transmogrification results in an accommodating apparition that doubles as a friendly, soothing pillow. Gemmel's how-to manual aims to empower children befuddled by night frights. By transforming the terrible into the comical, the lesson here is to face and defang the fear. Haas's humorously spooky illustrations complement the de-escalating tension surrounding bug-eyed, red-haired Finn's epiphany. And aside from a small inset depicting a frontal view of the child trembling in the altogether, Finn is always clad in his pajamas. This German import, however, suffers from a meandering rhyme scheme. The usual complications encountered when translating verse are probably to blame. From rhyming every other line to rhyming internally to rhyming in couplets, the starts and stutters make for an awkward read-aloud.