IT WAS A DARK AND SILLY NIGHT

For this third excursion into “Little Lit,” 15 authors, illustrators, and cartoonists submit riffs on the title’s opening line. Not unsurprisingly, the results vary widely in tone, from a poignant tale of children setting out on solitary quests by Lemony Snicket and Richard Sala, and another, from Patrick McDonnell (creator of the comic strip Mutts), about a suddenly-shy Moon coaxed into rising, to a wild graveyard party chronicled by Neil Gaiman and Gahan Wilson. Readers with retro tastes will enjoy William Joyce’s dustup between intrepid Art Aimsworth, Boy Crimefighter, and a gang of warrior florists (“herbicidal maniacs”) out to arrange all the tulips in Holland; Where’s Waldo? fans will pore over Martin Handford’s thickly populated endpapers; Kaz and Carlos Nine contribute offbeat episodes with more sophisticated designs and sensibilities. Like the previous volumes, this will appeal most to adults, and to visually oriented younger audiences on the verge of moving up to graphic novels. (Graphic Fiction. 10-13)