THE BEST LITTLE GHOST IN THE WORLD

Kochalka dishes up a brief episode in comics-style panels, featuring two ghosts, a monster, melted ice cream and burping. If that’s not a foolproof formula for pleasing the Oshkosh set, nothing is. Looking something like a one-eyed pink-and-yellow sock monkey in the bright, very simply drawn panels, the monster insists to Johnny Boo and his ghostlet companion Squiggle that “I’m not BAD, I’m nice”—but so greedily does it gulp an offered carton of ice cream that little Squiggle goes down too. Nor does the monster show much remorse…until Squiggle uses his special “squiggle power” to do loop-de-loops that force the monster to belch him out. Even then the burps don’t stop until Johnny uses his special “BOO power” to scare them away. Johnny’s debut is slender, even for the price, but he’s a true crowd-pleaser: playful, clever and ever ready to forgive, forget or bellow out a BOO. (Graphic novel. 5-7)