An unseen narrator attempts to discover what might scare Darth Vader.
Lord Vader scoffs at the typical Halloween beasties. Neither a wolf nor a man scares him, so a wolfman won’t do it; his armor will protect him from a vampire’s bite; and as long as the ghost isn’t Obi-Wan Kenobi’s or Yoda’s, he’s fine. Though he’s not afraid of a witch, learning that she might curse him makes him morose: “I am already cursed.” Unflappable until now, the Dark Lord finally grows agitated and then increasingly annoyed (but still not scared) when the costumed kids who have been trying to scare him remove their masks and use him as a jungle gym. But even when they leave, there’s still one left: the one who’s holding this book and who’s about to close it. That does it! À la Grover in There’s a Monster at the End of This Book, the finally fearful Darth Vader tries everything to get the reader to stop turning pages, and the narrator just rubs it in, comparing being closed in the book to being trapped in carbonite. Clever design places the narrator’s text in yellow, Vader’s sarcastic responses in white on black speech bubbles. The image of the staid Lord Vader fighting off hordes of children will keep kids in stitches.
Never underestimate the power of a child, even against the Dark Side.
(Picture book. 4-8)