When fractious mouse siblings Benny and Penny observe that a new neighbor has moved in next door, curiosity leads them into a big no-no: climbing the fence to see if perhaps the newcomer may have stolen Benny’s missing pail. The neighbor has curious footprints; might it be a monster? Hayes psychologically develops the suburban jungle masterfully, with a keen understanding that, to the small child, next door is as exotic as Inner Mongolia. His sunny, detailed scenes tell the story in sequential panels, punctuated by the children’s tearful outbursts, as stormy and temporary as summer showers. The illustrations provide just enough visual storytelling to allow emergent readers to focus on the dialogue, rendered in speech balloons, the standard vocabulary of preschoolers exactly in tune with readers’ capabilities: “You can’t just TAKE stuff,” Benny says as he climbs; “Uh-oh! This [mud pie] on the end is all broken!” exclaims the neighbor monster. Benny and Penny make agreeable protagonists, all sibling-squabbling when they’re on their own but uniting against the depredations of the “monster” and doing the right thing when it’s called for. (Graphic early reader. 5-8)
