PAPA!

A humorous reminder, in the same spirit as Jackie French Koller's No Such Thing (p. 60), that monsters are monsters only in the eye of the beholder. The story begins gently with a little boy dozing off in a warm bed when suddenly a noise awakens him. He finds himself face to face with a little green monster who is just as startled. Both of them open their mouths wide and scream, ``Papa! . . . There's a monster in my bed!'' The warty green father arrives first. ``Don't be afraid little one,'' he says, leading his frightened son into a warmly lit living room where a wild collection of horned, tusked, and antlered relatives smile benevolently at him. Once he's tucked safely back in, the human child and his parents repeat the performance, with identical text. In the end, the two little ones achieve a satisfying equilibrium of their own. Soft line and watercolor illustrations evoke the coziness of home. Much of the humor comes from the perfect parallels that are drawn between the children, not only in the text, but in their gestures and expressions. Warm and funny fare. (Picture book. 2-6)