HOW TO WARD OFF WOLVES

Helpful advice for children bothered by wolves.

Actually, it doesn’t take much to drive them off: Hide under a sheet, and they’ll take you for a ghost; blow on their long fur until it ruffles up, and they’ll float away like feathers; tell them a scary story; even just spitting out hard candy makes them “howl and growl and run.” Grimace toothily and glare as they will in Garrigue’s mordant cartoon illustrations, the hulking wolves stand no chance. The small, fearless children they try to menace only send them fleeing again and again with insouciant ease. Similar strategies bring similar results in How to Outwit Witches (978-1-60887-193-3)—simply slamming the book shut on one is particularly effective (not to mention gruesome)—and in How to Get Rid of Ghosts (978-1-60887-195-7). The agenda is visible but sits lightly on the comical pictures and brief, matter-of-fact narratives in these French anxiety-dispellers.

Real children with nighttime anxieties of any sort may take heart from seeing this cast of popeyed poppets in action.