THE UNDERWEARWOLF

Werewolf? There wolf!

Typically, kids don’t get all that excited when they receive underwear for their birthdays, but when Uncle Larry sends the book’s young narrator a strange pair of undies, our hero skips the warning label (something about not donning them during a full moon) and slips them on. Almost instantly the child begins to transform, becoming a creature of the night that’s “hairier than a hundred hamsters.” Hijinks ensue, and soon the youngster is running with a pack of wolves, making it home just before the sun rises. The book ends with a vow never to wear those undies again, “until the next full moon.” Sterer leans hard into the funniest aspects of wearing transformative underpants. Three times the kid considers removing the undies only to realize that “I would have been butt naked” in increasingly visible and ridiculous situations. Santoso’s visual gags aid in the hilarity, varying from the subtle (the child peering up at a huge moon that couldn’t be rounder, thinking, “The moon didn’t look too full to me”) to (naturally) werewolf wedgies. Pair this tale with that fellow spooky, funny, tighty-whities-themed picture book Creepy Pair of Underwear by Aaron Reynolds and Peter Brown (2017). The protagonist and the rest of the family are pale-skinned and dark-haired.

Best read beneath a gibbous moon to truly make your intended audience howl…with laughter.