BATMAN

Joining the pre-release buzz for his latest film (scheduled for summer), Batman steps out of the shadows to introduce himself to less practiced readers who might be a little hazy on what he’s all about. There must be a few. In pithy bursts of boxed prose—“In the dark of the night, criminals think they can get away. They are wrong”—he retraces his origins and training, describes his work and introduces a rogues’ gallery of foes, from the Joker (“He never plays his cards right”) to Catwoman. Using appropriately dark colors and bold, heavy lines, Cosentino depicts his Caped Crusader, massively muscled and with a chin like a sledgehammer, leaping into action, collaring crooks and, as a closing image, sharing rooftop with a crouching gargoyle as a flock of bats crosses the full moon overhead. To younger children, Batman will come across as sinister, but not uncomfortably so, and despite all the crimefighting depicted, the level of explicit violence is relatively low. (Picture book. 6-8)