It’s been a while since
my last picture book roundup, mainly because I haven’t had the time to put some protective plastic cover on my new picture book acquisitions (and you know I can’t read a “naked” book).
I got three picture books that came already encased in plastic, so here they are in today’s roundup: Lady in the Water: A bedtime story by M. Night Shyamalan (illustrated by Crash McCreery), Lucy Dove by Janice Del Negro (illustrated by Leonid Gore), and Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin by Lloyd Moss (illustrated by Marjorie Priceman), books 73-75 for 2009.
Lady in the Water is based on the film of the same title. Having watched that documentary about M. Night Shyamalan on cable that turned out to be a hoax (a guerilla tactic for the pre-publicity of The Village), I still get the creeps reading this book, which, in a cautionary tone, tells the reader about the narf, the “lady in the water,” a rare type of sea nymph that could be living right in your backyard.
The narrator enumerates the signs that point to a narf: sprinklers going off by mistake, slime in the swimming pool, pinpricks in the chest, and the narf looks for a person that can be used as a vessel so that she can return to the ocean.
But there is something else that could be in your backyard, the hyena-like scrunt that hunts for the narf as prey. The scrunt is also afraid of Tartutic, three monkey-like creatures that lie in wait for the scrunt to make a wrong move.
Continue reading “A narf, a seamstress, and the orchestra (Picture book roundup #5)”