Minor greed, outsized imaginations and a couple of boys collide in almost wordless sequential panels suggestive of James Stevenson, Jon Agee and Mad magazine. On a tiny patio, two playmates tussle over stuff—a toy ship in an inflatable pool, a bike, bowls of ice cream. Each kid snaggles the other’s temporary possession via the time-tested technique of shouting, “Don’t look now but there’s a...” Conjuring a giant snake, a winged dragon, a striped tiger and more, one boy fleeces the other until—yikes!—their umbrella table plummets through cracking concrete to a creature-teeming milieu surpassing their wildest invocations. In the volcanic jungle where they alight, that contested bike dangles precariously and an ice-cream bowl perches in a tree, freezing the tuckus off a bird that mistakes it for a nest of eggs. When the ice cream attracts a monster, the boys flee—pedaling, diving and bursting upward, to bunk beds, books and—one gathers—rumpuses to come. Briant’s bright palette and storyboarding expertise produce kid-pleasing results wry enough to elicit adult chuckles. (Picture book. 5-8)
