JUMPY JACK & GOOGILY

The same duo that created Meet Wild Boars (2005) is back with a tale of two friends proceeding through their day. Googily, whose blue color, long tongue and sharp teeth mark him as an oddball indeed, accompanies Jumpy Jack, a snail whose nervousness is mostly in his eyes and his imagination. Jumpy Jack sees monsters in many nooks and crannies, asking Googily to investigate. At bedtime, fear of monsters is at its height, tables are turned and that’s when all comes to a head—or is it a foot? That Googily is a monster himself is unacknowledged in the text but made clear in Blackall’s ink-and-watercolor illustrations, in which he embodies Jumpy Jack’s fears. “What if there is a monster with two fingers on each hand, who stares at me through the letterbox and sticks out its awful tongue?” quavers the snail, to which Googily utters the repeated refrain, “No monsters here,” even as he does exactly that. A humorous tamer of monsters that will leave everyone saying, “Phew,” along with Jumpy Jack. (Picture book. 3-6)